Do You Think Manny Ramirez Knows We're In a Recession?

This is gonna date me, but I vividly remember when the Yankees made Dave Winfield the highest paid player in baseball.

It was 1981, and Winfield got a 10-year deal for $23 million. At the time, people bitched and moaned because 1.) In the Reagan recession, regular Joe’s (and Jane’s) weren’t seeing their checks increase, though the richest Americans would be getting nice fat tax breaks. Also, it was just two years earlier that Nolan Ryan had become the first player to make a million bucks a year.

So in two years, the highest salary more than doubled.

Now here we are in 2009, and manny Ramirez is looking for a 2-year $45 million deal — and that’s not even the highest salary in baseball. That belongs to A-Rod (insert snide steroid comment here), who makes $27.5 million a year — $2 million of which is injected into his ass. (Sorry — couldn’t resist.)

So in 30 years, the highest baseball salary is now 27.5 times more than it was in 1979.

Now I don’t want to be one of those namby pamby people who whines about baseball salaries. Boo hoo freakin hoo, right? Because, for one thing, even if owners didn’t have to pay huge players salaries, I’ll bet they’d still charge us out the wazoo to see games.

That’s just how they are. Greedy jerks.

But I do sort of think wistfully about that making that kind of coin. I mean, imagine how that sort of surge in salary would affect your take-home.

For instance, for some insane reason, I decided to pursue the non-lucrative career of journalism. Now in 1979, I was spending more time playing Whiffle Ball than I was writing crappy stories for the local rag. But I’d guess the average pay for a journalist then was probably around $20,000. (Heck, some papers probably still pay that.)

Now if the journalist salary increased as much as the Major League Baseball salary, I’d be making — let’s see . . . a little math calculation here . . .

Oh, snap! I’d be making $550,000!

Not too shabby. In fact, if I were making $550,000 a year, I’d probably never complain about pinhead management decisions. I woudn’t gripe about having to write crappy stories. And, shoot — I might even stop fabricating my time sheets.*

Alas, all I can do is sit on the couch with a bag of Fritos and watch baseball, wishing I could hit a 95-mile per hour fastball.

If only I’d played a few more games of Whiffle Ball.