Are baseball salaries too high?

I'm sure you were probably as distressed as I was to find out that the average Major League Baseball player will be forced to survive on a paltry $2.49 million this season.
That represents a 3 percent drop from last season.
In cold, hard numbers, it's about $70,000, or one, really decked-out Hummer.
(Or, for a family of six, trips to about 10 major league games this season.)
Manny Ramirez of the Boston Red Sox will lead all major leaguers this season with a contract that calls for $22.5 million.
Last season, Ramirez had 679 plate appearances; if he matches that number in 2004, he'll make $33,136.97 per appearance. (Notice, I didn't use the word "earn".)
Of course, for every Manny Ramirez, there's a Jason Standridge, who, as a pitcher for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, is forced to make due on the major league's minimum salary -- $302,500.
A history primer
Before we get too upset over what some may see as an out-of-control system, remember that for almost 75 years major league players were subjected to baseball's "reserve clause," which made them the property of the team that owned their individual contracts for one year at a time.
Players had virtually no opportunity to negotiate their deals; instead, they had to take what the owner of their team was willing to give them.
That's until Curt Flood came along.
Flood was an All-Star outfielder who, following the 1969 season, was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies. Flood refused to accept the trade and, with the support of the Players Association, sued then-baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
The case made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against Flood and, in effect, protected Major League Baseball's exemption from antitrust laws, which it still enjoys today.
However, the case set the stage for a landmark arbitration decision in 1975.
Didn't sign
Pitchers Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles played that season without signing their contracts. With the aid of Players Association head Marvin Miller, Messersmith and McNally interpreted the reserve clause to state that teams could hold a player for only one year after his contract expired.
Messersmith and McNally took their case before an arbitrator and won, which started the current era of free agency we have today.
Messersmith was offered $220,000 over three years by the Dodgers, but they were unwilling to grant him a no-trade clause. He eventually signed a multi-year deal with the Atlanta Braves for $1.75 million.
In 1967, the average player salary was $19,000; by 1979 that had increased to $113,558.
Twelve years later in 1991, the average player salary had increased to $891,188, and the Oakland Athletics had the largest team payroll -- $33.6 million. (By comparison, only four teams, including the Indians and Pirates, have payrolls below $40 million this season.)
The average salary reached $1 million for the first time in 1992.
So it seems like the sport has gone from one extreme, in which players for many years were grossly underpaid, to the other extreme, in which they are grossly overpaid.
More important than what the players are paid, though, is the widening gap in team salaries. A cap would seem to be the logical course of action, but getting the 30 current major league owners to agree on how to achieve that is far easier said than done.
But, money has also been a source of controversy in the sport. In 1930, Babe Ruth was told he had a higher salary than President Herbert Hoover:
"Why not? I had a better year than he did."
XRob Todor is sports editor of The Vindicator. Write to him at & lt;a href=mailto:todor@vindy.com & gt;todor@vindy.com & lt;/a & gt;.