Here's one: Manny Ramirez is said to want roughly $30 million to hit home runs and make us forget our troubles for a few hours at a time roughly 162 days a year. All of this is fine and dandy, but really, in this day and age, is any athlete worth that much?
I look at players as figurative CEOs, heads of their own private companies. Well, with the economy having tanked, we now get the willies when reading studies such as the one showing the CEOs of the biggest U.S. companies hauling in an average of $10.8 million a year -- 346 times what the average worker was paid. Some say executive pay should be somehow controlled or regulated.
How about thinking a little harder about the largesse dished out to top athletes?
And while we are at it, let's not forget about the real CEOs: fat-cat owners like Frank and Jamie McCourt.
Last I checked, it's not as if baseball has struggled the last few years. Revenues have rocketed, revenue sharing has been a boon -- just ask the Tampa Bay Rays.
Better yet, just ask the McCourts, who, according to reports, recently purchased side-by-side estates on the Malibu beachfront for just over $50 million.
I'm thinking aloud here, but maybe as we dive into this issue, an idea, maybe a crazy one, takes form: If baseball owners got together and discussed player salaries, they'd be accused of collusion and we'd soon see the mother-of-all sports lawsuits. So perhaps out of all the questioning comes a series of public, well-televised, cyber-connected symposiums involving owners from all of the major sports, players' representatives and even fans. (Yes, it's true that nothing real in the way of change may come of this, but sometimes talk leads to action. Besides, I'm a dreamer.)
On the table will be the examination of salaries, expectations and the responsibility teams have to their communities.
Is it OK for players and owners to keep raking in ungodly sums while not giving back more to the fans -- the cops, teachers and plumbers who sit in the bleachers and upper decks?
Should the unfettered market have the final say, rewarding on-field winners, punishing losers, probably not caring one bit about touchy-feely corporate charity?
Or should there be harder-nosed players salary caps, owners forced by leagues to share their wealth and spend more of their revenue on the public good.
Maybe, from all of this, the fans will start realizing that they are the ones with the real clout. They might discover a central truth: Staying away from stadium parking lots and turnstiles is the best way to send a message to the fat cats.
Just some questions to be pondered at my imagined symposium. Or in your living room with the Lakers on TV.
I'm still trying to make up my mind on them. This much I've come to. Mrs. McCourt should be thanked. She opened up a box full of hard questions.
Now it's time for us to dive inside and drag them out.
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kurt.streeter@latimes.com
