The Zong

Wow. What a weekend. And by “weekend,” I mean two-week period spent making the merriment with friends and family whilst some Big Time Events of Great Import came to pass. Hardly had the egg nog smell faded from my chest hair when came news of the passing of a president, a godfather and a dictator. Then our troops reached the tragic 3,000-death milestone in Iraq, and I evidently fell down a flight of stairs. One hardly knows where to start, so I guess I’ll say a few words about Barry Zito:

“Now that’s the kind of thing I’ve been talking about.”

Of course, some of you out there who own baseball teams may think that giving any pitcher a huge contract is a bad idea on a number of levels. I also know that a lot of peeps think it’ll be hard for Zito to actually make himself worth the money, and I won’t spend any time justifying the contract by writing what a few others already said when I was off rotting my teeth with peanut brittle and Southern Comfort. We all know he’s 28 and has never missed a start and grah grah grah. That’s really not what this is about, though.

The Giants will pay Zito $126 million to play a game in front of a bunch of people. For you “visually oriented” folks, that means he can cross the Bay Bridge 31 million times and still have enough money for about a year’s rent downtown. That’s a lot of scratch, and Brian Sabean will have some ‘splaining to do if B-Zit averages much less than a win per million dollars (that’s 18 a season, dummy), but if I have to hear much more bitching about overpaying professional athletes, I’ll be resorting to violence as soon as possible, if only because it’s such a stupid, obvious statement; Of course they’re overpaid! They’re taking home millions of dollars to play a frigging game!

I don’t make New Years resolutions, but if I did my 2007 list would probably start off with something about getting into shape or never drinking again, and would be followed closely by a firm resolution to resolve to start punching people in the face when they act shocked about the size of any professional athlete’s salary. It’s not really all that profound to point out that a guy who spits on people and can catch a football is making $10 million this year when many U.S. Marines make about 100 bucks a day to defend our country. It isn’t hard to find evidence that we’re spending money on the wrong people, but I’m done listening to people yell about it on talk radio until they actually stop paying to go to sporting events or stop watching them entirely.

Major League Baseball pulled in $5.2 billion in 2006, and I guess that means they’ve got some money to throw at their players. Go ahead and pore over the balance sheets as Zito takes the mound next year, but maybe keep an eye on that other front office while you’re waiting for pitchers and catchers to report.

- M.G.