DAUGHERTY: Baseball salaries all about ego

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PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — They canceled the game and two hours later, a dozen kids still stood in the rain, waiting for an autograph from the richest ballplayer in the world.

Alex Rodriguez was in a batting cage 20 feet away, working. Soon enough, he'd go from the cage to the weight room, and back. The small crowd dispersed. The rest of the Rangers exited the parking lot in their shiny, new vehicles. The clubhouse attendants asked the last sportswriter to leave, they were shutting things down for the day.

As I was leaving, Rodriguez was still cracking baseballs into a net. The man earns his pay, as well as anyone can who earns $25 million a year.

“Explain the money to me,” I'd asked Junior Griffey earlier in the day. “After seven zeroes in the contract, what does it mean?”

Rodriguez will make $250 million in the next decade. He could paper all his bedrooms in $1,000 bills and have enough left over to buy Greece. All the extravagance in the world can't cost $250 million. Can it?

The world has only so many Mercedes 500 SLs it can sell you.

Junior's take

Junior Griffey has rooms in his house he's never seen. The full tour would take days. Explain the money, I asked.

“A lot of it is ego,” Griffey said. “It's not even the players' egos most of the time. It's the owners.”

Owners wave their checkbooks the way Lee May waved his bat.

“Look at the guy from Miami,” Griffey said. “He goes out and buys a World Series, then he dumps everybody.”

That would be Wayne Huizenga, and Griffey is correct. It's well known Griffey took less money to play for the Reds. What's not so well known is, he's glad he did. Not that anyone should feel for a guy pocketing $6 million this year. But in the unreal world of baseball finance, it amounted to a noble sacrifice.

Last week, Mark McGwire accepted $30 million from St. Louis for two years. It was also considered gallant.

“I've seen him take responsibility to steer this game in the right direction,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa decided.

Bravo! I guess.

In the money

But on a day not long ago, 100 media members gathered to ogle Alex Rodriguez. Not because he was more talented than a year ago, but because he was impossibly richer.

Players are right when they say it's not the money. Who could spend $250 million? It's what the money represents.

That's why Frank Thomas can talk with a straight face about A-list players making more money than he does. Thomas sees himself as an A-list kind of guy. It's why Pete Harnisch can discuss $16 million as if it were a nickel on the sidewalk.

“It's not that way,” Griffey insisted. “Because you make the most doesn't mean you think you're the best. I'm the highest paid player on this team, but anybody can come up and joke with me. I didn't come to spring training driving a brand new Rolls Royce,”

Nope, you drove a late-model Mercedes sports convertible. But we digress.

I wanted A-Rod to explain the money to me. What does $250 million mean? But he was working, for his money.

“Money changes everything,” I said to Griffey.

“No, it doesn't,” Griffey said. “You still have the same problems.”

E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.

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