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<\/a><\/p>\nRUSSELL WILSON<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably me. I think I\u2019m dragging my feet. Life and the progression of it toward an unknown star have me wishing for a simpler time. It\u2019s the old adage that as we get older we start to talk in terms of \u201cthe good old days.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to be like that. But I can\u2019t help myself. I try to drag my feet and slow that kind of thinking down because it is not good to live life in the good old days. You get left behind if you do, and friends melt away like ice in the Arctic in our age of extreme warming.<\/p>\n
What has led me to this today is the recent blabbering on and on by the radio sports shock jocks about Russell Wilson and contract negotiations with the Seahawks. Day after numbing day that is all those shock jocks talked about. Will Russell sign? What happens if he doesn\u2019t? Will the Seahawks trade him to the New York Jets?\u00a0 On and on it went.<\/p>\n
It got so bad I had to turn the car radio to jazz.<\/p>\n
First of all, the Seahawks weren\u2019t going to let Wilson go. They were going to sign him. I can\u2019t imagine the outcry if they had. It just wasn\u2019t going to happen. And $35 million a year later, it was done.<\/p>\n
A long time ago I got numbed to the amount of money local athletes were being paid. When Ken Griffey Jr. got his big raise, I wrote how much money each payday he got before taxes (baseball players get paid every two weeks during the season, which makes it 12 paychecks).<\/p>\n
Griffey, then 26, signed in 1996 for $34 million over four years with some of it deferred, which then was the richest contract in baseball. The contract gave him $7.25 million in the first year, $7.75 in the second and $8.25 in each of the last two years. The Mariners deferred $1.25 from his salary in each year and paid that over the next four years.<\/p>\n
Without being exact, Griffey was getting about a $650,000 each pay day. I imagined back then that Griffey when he got his first check rushed to the closest 7-Eleven to cash it. Can you imagine him asking a clerk at the store to cash it for him?<\/p>\n
We have progressed a long ways in the 23 years since Griffey got his first big contract. Wilson\u2019s contract means he gets about $2 million every paycheck (the NFL pays players for each game of the 17-week season). The 7-Eleven clerk would really be floored if Wilson showed up and asked to cash his check.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m gotten so I ignore the big money that athletes receive now. It means nothing to me. Estimates put Wilson\u2019s off-the-field money from endorsements at $10 million a year and his net work is estimated from $30 to $45 million. His wife Ciara, a R&B star, has an estimated net worth of about $20 million.<\/p>\n
So what? My estimated net worth is about $10 (maybe, depending on the time of day), but I don\u2019t worry much about it. I get through each day. I can\u2019t imagine what it would be like to have millions in the bank. And I don\u2019t know what I would do about it if I did have that much in the bank.<\/p>\n
I remember talking to the late Dave Henderson, the former Mariner, one day in the media lunch room at Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park) and he told me he didn\u2019t do investments because he didn\u2019t trust them. He wanted to feel his money in his hands.<\/p>\n
How much was that?<\/p>\n
Henderson said he had $7 million in his checking account. He also owned a couple houses and a couple cars, paying cash for them.<\/p>\n
I can remember when if I had a nickel I was happy and if I had a quarter I was floating on air. But that was when a nickel meant something, and I could buy an Orange Crush and a hotdog for a quarter. Now a quarter is almost a throw-away.<\/p>\n
We have advanced as a society since I was spending 25 cents on a hotdog and a can of pop. Or so they say, because I can\u2019t believe I pay almost $10 for a bag of popcorn at the movies.<\/p>\n
Babe Ruth was the first player to make $50,000 a year for playing baseball in 1922. Then eight years later he signed for $80,000, which made his salary more than the President of the United States, Herbert Hoover.<\/p>\n
When Ruth was asked if he thought he deserved to make more money than Hoover, Ruth famously said, \u201cWhy not? I had a better year than he did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh\u2019s Hank Greenberg in 1947 became the first baseball player to make $100,000 a year and Nolan Ryan in 1982 while with Houston became the first million-dollar player.<\/p>\n
Who is the highest paid baseball player this year?<\/p>\n
No, it\u2019s not Mike Trout.<\/p>\n
Try the Nationals Stephen Strasburg. The 30-year-old right hander is making $38.3 million this season.<\/p>\n
As I have gotten old and closer to the finish line than the start line, I sometimes drift my busy mind back when I was a young buck running barefoot through the foothills of the Alleghenies and we played baseball in a untended field using rocks for bases, played football in the side lawn and basketball in barns among the many dairy farms that dotted the landscape in southwestern New York State.<\/p>\n
Yes, we kids played outdoors. Not many kids do that today. They are usually playing their video games inside, and a can of pop and a hotdog may cost several dollars, if not more, especially at the ballpark (a hotdog alone at T-Mobil Park in Seattle costs $6).<\/p>\n
But as the saying goes, you can\u2019t go back home. I\u2019m living in the present and that means paying the going rate or get out of the mainstream. I may wish that times were simpler, but it is what it is.<\/p>\n
Keep on keepin\u2019 on and make the most of your day.<\/p>\n
Be well pal.<\/p>\n
Be careful out there.<\/p>\n
Have a great day.<\/p>\n
You are loved.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TERRY MOSHER RUSSELL WILSON It\u2019s probably me. I think I\u2019m dragging my feet. Life and the progression of it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-mosher","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3289,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions\/3289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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