by David Brown

Created on: July 30, 2009   Last Updated: July 31, 2009

Professional athletes are exciting to watch, this is no doubt. However, when it comes time to understand and realize how much it is that they make to play the game, whether it be baseball, football and basketball, our heads have to be swimming. This has to be especially true while the United States, if not the world over is in a terrible economic and financial collapse.

Granted, we are beginning to see signs that we are coming out of the recession. This only means that the sports team owners and their players are going to continue to make millions more for what they do for only a certain period of time.

Professional athletes are well over-paid for what they do. Take baseball for example. Baseball consists of one hundred and sixty games. These games are played between April and October. Granted, some teams go to the playoffs and then two teams battle it out in what we call The World Series. Talking with some people who somewhat like baseball, say, they find it boring.

The games can go on for hours upon hours until one team has at least one more run than the other. Most professional baseball players, especially those who sign a contract worth ninety million dollars, say for an eight year run, only perform with a mediocrity that we cannot stand it. So, what do we fans do? We still pay the exorbitant prices of tickets so that we can go and scream and holler to get them to either play better or hope that the umpires get glasses.

Professional athletes have to come to a realization that most do not think about. What happens if they get injured? Oh, forgive this writer. They still get paid. What if they get injured and it is a career ending injury? Most still get paid, some do not. Over the years, we have also seen overpaid professional athletes get way over their heads and either get caught doing illegal drugs or end up drinking and getting into car accidents or we hear that they have a domestic disturbance because they just cannot handle the success that they have come upon.

There are professions out there which are much more important than a professional athlete. For instance, there are police officers and firefighters whose lives are on the line each and every day. They make a mediocre salary. Then there are those who are called soldiers, airmen, sailors, marines and coastguardsmen who put their lives on the line for our freedom and get paid "peanuts" for doing so.

We tend to forget what it is that they do. However, when the ball game comes on television, we cannot wait to make the popcorn, the hotdogs and the apple pie and sit our rear ends down on the couch and again, scream and holler and tell them to go, go, and go.

There has to be some kind of overhaul of the professional sports pay plan. If the government can tell us how much we can make when it comes to our salaries, why not tell professional athletes to do the same.

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