Dick Tracy:
Money in Sports

For years one of the many concerns of fans of professional sports is that money would spoil everything. To a certain extent, this has proven to be the case, as big money has produced a generation of spoiled brat pro athletes.

As we've turned the corner into the 21st century, it becomes increasingly clear that we may be seeing the end of an age when a pro athlete starts and ends his or her career with the team that first signed them. In baseball, the Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams of yesteryear have been replaced by the A-Rod and Roger Clemens of today. It may be a light-year or more before we see another Cal Ripken, Jr.-type situation in which the ball club and the player apparently have equal amounts of dedication and respect for one another.

Furthermore, the era of free agency has given us some aberrational assaults on the record books, most note-worthy of which is the case of Rickey Henderson, who is now in the midst of his 11th big league stint with his seventh or eighth big league team.

For this reason, when Henderson, now a San Diego Padre (again), surpassed Babe Ruth's all-time record for bases on balls last week, it was an underwhelming accomplishment, performed before an underwhelming crowd of some 15,000 underwhelmed fans, or about half the size of a typical Fenway Park audience. Henderson's a great player, maybe the all-time best lead off hitter, and a surefire Hall of Fame entrant, but he's hanging around with a team of also-rans for personal records and a few more paychecks.

Nevertheless, as we see the end of major league baseball's first month, who rests atop the several divisions? The Seattle Mariners, who let A-Rod walk rather than pay his extortionist demands for insane amounts of dough, now crown the AL West. The Minnesota Twins, with the smallest payroll in baseball, sit atop the AL Central. The Philadelphia Phillies stand in first place in the NL East, ahead of two free-spending clubs who are perennial contenders, Ted Turner's Atlanta Brave$ and the less than Amazin' NY Met$, who are dead last. Even the long-suffering Chicago Cubs are in the lofty air of the #1 spot.

Only the Boston Red $ox and the LA Dodger$ are big spenders who have first place clubs … so far. And the top-dollar Yankee$ are in third place!

NBA Basketball is another domain of the big contract and the bigger payroll. But this playoff season we have the over paid being out played. In fact, all three of the NBA's top payroll clubs were in trouble in the first round of the playoffs. The Miami Heat spent megabucks on free agents and went three-and-out against the blue collar Charlotte Hornets.

The Portland Trailblazers, with as much disfunctional talent as any team in history, and probably a league record for technical fouls, played abysmally against the LA-LA Land Lakers in their first two games, and deserved to get swept. Even the Knicks looked like they might fail to get past the Raptors.

Those three "teams" make it all the more fun to watch the Utah Jazz with old pro workhorses John Stockton and Karl Malone against the undersung Dallas Mavericks. Neither is likely to become league champions but at least those clubs play like a team. Sure, all Jazz and Mav team members are getting salaries that are the envy of us working stiffs, but at least they seem to be having fun.