The Pecan Park Eagle

Carl Crawford Joins Red Sox in 2011.

Well, we Astro fans  are now officially free to euthanize any illusions we may have held about native son Carl Crawford coming home to give new meaning to the “Crawford Boxes” at Minute Maid Park. Carl has now been recruited by Red Sox General (Manager) Theo Epstein as the latest multi-year contract weapon in his Boston club’s ongoing war against “The Evil Empire.”  The Red Sox already had picked off Adrian Gonzalez from the San Diego Padres talent vineyard prior to adding the big grape that Crawford is – and they did it while General (Manager) Cashen of the New York Yankees had begun his recruitment dance with start pitcher Cliff Lee for a contract, if it happens, that may well alter again the latest top ten list of big spending on baseball talent.

For total dollars committed, Carl Crawford now moves into the # 10 spot because of his new deal with the Red Sox. It’s for seven years and $142 million dollars. If Carl Crawford ever comes home to Houston now as an active player, it’s most likely that he will be 37 years old by the time he’s free to make a twilight deal somewhere, if he wants to keep playing at all. You never know, but it’s much more likely now that Carl Crawford will never play a single game for the Houston Astros. Seven to eight years from now, the Astros will be knee deep in new ownership and, from the way our economy is changing, the world will be such a different place from the one we know now.

Who knows if baseball will continue to pay these obscene salaries to the game’s best players? Will the fan interest in baseball continue to convince advertisers forever  that televised baseball games are the best place for hundreds of key companies to place their advertising dollars? If these dollars ever get pulled away, or peeled back, there won’t be any more A Rod stratosphere contracts because the money simply will not be there to support them.

In the meanwhile, here is how the biggest active multi-year contracts in baseball stack up through today:

Top 10 Money Players (by Team, Start Date) (Years/Total Bucks) (Average $ per Year) *

1. Alex Rodriguez (New York Yankees, 2008) (10 years/$275 M) ($37.5 M per year)

2. Alex Rodriguez (Texas Rangers, 2001) (10 years/$252 M) ($25.2 M per year)

3. Derek Jeter (New York Yankees, 2011) (10 years/$189 M) ($18.9 M per year)

4. Joe Mauer (Minnesota Twins, 2011) (8 years/$184 M) ($23 M per year)

5. Mark Teixeira (New York Yankees, 2009) (8 years/$180 M) ($25.4 M per year)

6. C.C. Sabathia (New York Yankees, 2009) (7 ears/$161 M) ($23 M per year)

7. Manny Ramirez (Boston Red Sox, 2001) (8 years/$160 M) ($20 M per year)

8. Troy Tulowitzki (Colorado Rockies, 2011) (10 years/$157.75 M) ($15.78 M per year)

9. Miguel Cabrera (Detroit Tigers, 2008) (8 years/$152 M) ($19 M per year)

10. Carl Crawford (Boston Red Sox, 2011) (7 years/$142 M) ($10.28 M per year)

* List does not include large one-year contracts to Ryan Howard with the Philadelphia Phillies, Johan Santana with the New York Mets, or Manny Ramirez with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

My question is simply this: Would it really be so bad if baseball suddenly could no longer afford to make their best players of the moment as instantly rich as Saudi-Arabian desert oil princes?

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned and way out of line here, but I didn’t grow up loving baseball because it’s best players were light years richer than the rest of us. I grew up adoring the players who lived pretty much as the rest of us did, but who chose to play baseball because their obvious passion and love of the game publicly also matched their abilities to play it at the highest competitive level. You could just see it ib=n them from the time you reached the ballpark through the last batter in the game.

These guys showed up early, be they star or sub. They all shagged flies. They ran together. They took BP, of course, but they also took infield practice, sometimes even engaging in a little shadow-ball pantomiming and pepper game popping for their own amusement and reflex sharpening.

It was a game. The players loved it. And so did the fans. If the big salaries disappeared, I wouldn’t care if we lost some future Carl Crawford to the NFL as a running back, or some future Randy Johnson to the NBA as a forward, If we can still round up enough talented guys to play the game from the heart, I will still be there as a fan to watch baseball that is also priced right to the circumstances of our changing economy.

Please check in with a comment. What are you own thoughts on the future of big multiple year salaries in baseball?