Baseball is a winner-take-all career. There is a very small chance of making massive amounts of money. But more importantly, there is a very big chance of making almost no money. Some minor leaguers earn $8,000 dollars per year.
To have more chances at winning the baseball lottery, some players are deciding to get together and face the odds as a group. They are joining “income pools,” which could change the way baseball players, and lots of professionals, think about how we get paid.
Steve Scalise, Congressman Wounded in Shooting, Is Known as a Low-key Lover of Baseball
Mr. Scalise, 51, who served in the Louisiana State Legislature and has been a fixture in Louisiana Republican politics, was elected to the House in 2008 in a special election to replace Bobby Jindal, who had been elected governor. Mr. Scalise quickly and quietly amassed power among a diverse group of House Republicans, in spite of the most conservative wing’s persistent chafing at what it saw as his establishment-wing persona.
.. Mr. Scalise is popular among his colleagues, who say he refrains from the sort of hardball tactics that whips sometimes use to wring out votes. “He generally tries to use a soft-glove approach,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, who resisted voting for a health care bill that the White House deeply wanted to pass. “He is relentless even if you’ve told him no. I was a no on health care, but that didn’t stop him and coming up again and asking.”
Phillis Schlafly: Baseball Ruined by Foreign Players
Schlafly’s idea of conservatism could move in unusual directions. She contended that Major League Baseball was being ruined by foreign players:
More than a quarter of Major League Baseball players today are foreign-born, with whom our youth are less likely to identify. Some of these players cannot speak English, and they did not rise through the ranks of Little League. These foreign-born players enter on visas and take positions that should have gone to American players . . . Perhaps baseball owners think that foreign players are cheaper and easier to control.
Er, cheaper? Has she looked at those multi-million dollar salaries that both native-born and foreign-born players are getting?