Who’d be on MLB Money?

Posted on April 20, 2016 by danglickman

After reading about the addition of Harriet Tubman to the 20 dollar bill, I got to thinking: If Major League Baseball had it’s own currency, who’d be on it?

It’s not entirely outlandish. After all, there are Disney Dollars and up in Canada they have Canadian Tire money, it’s not that much out of the realm of possibility that baseball could have it’s own currency that could only be used at ballparks, team stores, and the like. Maybe they could call them “Baseball Bucks”, or something like that.

So… who’d be on these… Baseball Bucks?

$1: Henry Chadwick. The one-dollar Baseball Buck would have to, like George Washington on the US $1, be that of a founding father. While Chadwick can’t be considered as one of baseball’s many possible inventors, he was one of the men who helped promote it and made it a widely-played sport.. He also developed many of the game’s mainstay statistics, such as batting average and ERA. It’s not surprising, really, that some have called him the “Father of Baseball”. So, it feels right that he’d be on the $1 Baseball Buck. On the other side of the $1 Baseball Buck would be a image of the Elysian Fields in New Jersey as it was during the early days of baseball.

$2: Ty Cobb. Thomas Jefferson is a guy who was so great, important, and brilliant that he kind of has to be on money, but who’s life was so full of personal failings and hypocrisy that at times you kind of wish you didn’t have to put him on money. So in some ways it’s good that he’s on the two-dollar-bill, the rarest of all currently-printed banknotes. I’d imagine that a similar arrangement would exist for Baseball Bucks. Ty Cobb was too good and too important of a player to be ignored, but, well, he was Ty Cobb, possibly the meanest son-of-a-gun to ever play the game. He possibly once killed a drifter, he once beat up a crippled man, and his racism is so well-known that it’s entirely possible he was less racist than many people think he was (he was still pretty racist, he just wasn’t as racist as Cap Anson, who was certifiably The Worst). But he also was unquestionably the greatest baseball player of all time before Babe Ruth showed up and still stands as one of the greatest hitters who ever lived, so…. he’s going to be the Baseball Bucks version of Thomas Jefferson. The reverse of the $2 Baseball Buck would be the late Tiger Stadium.

$5: Jackie Robinson. The $1 dollar bill belongs to the father, but $5 dollar bill belongs to the emancipator. Perhaps that is giving Jackie Robinson too much credit- after all, the integration of baseball was ultimately a result of many men (and women!), both black and white- but the fact remains that Jackie Robinson, more than anybody else in baseball history, belongs on money. And I’m talking about real money here, not fake hypothetical baseball money. So, not surprisingly, he’s a shoo-in for being on a Baseball Buck. The reverse of the $5 Baseball Buck would be Jackie Robinson sliding in as he steals home against Yogi Berra and the Yankees during the 1955 World Series.

$10: Ted Williams. I can’t really make any deep connection between Alexander Hamilton and Ted Williams (outside of the fact that they were both workaholic veterans who didn’t have the most stable of family lives growing up and made a bunch of enemies), but… c’mon, he’s Ted Williams. He’d have to be on a Baseball Buck. The reverse of the $10 Baseball Buck would be Fenway Park.

$20: Satchel Paige. There needs to be a pitcher amongst these legends, and while Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Sandy Koufax or Greg Maddux (amongst others) would all have fine claims, none of them were as colorful and legendary as Satchel Paige, who would also provide a nice nod to the great Negro Leaguers. The reverse of the $20 Baseball Buck would be the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City.

$50: John McGraw. There needs to be a manager. John McGraw is the greatest manager of all time (anybody who disagrees is also disagreeing with Connie Mack, who once declared that McGraw was the only true manager in baseball), so he’s it. It would make sense to have him be the $50 Baseball Buck, since the real fifty-dollar-bill has Ulysses Grant- a general- on it. The reverse of the $50 Baseball Buck would be Comiskey Park during the first All-Star Game, which McGraw managed in.

$100: Babe Ruth. It’s all about the Babe. And, just as Ben Franklin excelled in multiple areas and had a infamous appetite for food and women, so did the Bambino… although admittedly pitching and hitting is a bit different than politics and science (and writing, and philosophy, and… you get the idea.) And, much like how Ben Franklin was the first grand American celebrity, Ruth was baseball’s first megastar. Who else could be on the biggest denomination? The reverse of the $100 Baseball Buck would be the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

You may be wondering who’d be on the coins. Well, there wouldn’t be any coins, probably. I mean, Disney doesn’t have any coins in their Disney Dollars, so I don’t think MLB would, either. Maybe I can do that in another post….

(Blogathon ’16) A Random Musing on the Fairport Little League Money-Grabbing Promotion

Posted on January 29, 2016 by danglickman

This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

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Tons of people play Little League Baseball or have played Little League Baseball when they were of the age where you can.

This is not a story about my actual time on the Little League field, where my greatest moment was the time I drew a walk with the bases loaded to force in the walk-off run. No, this is about something else: the Fairport Little League money-grabbing promotion, a crazy promotion in which a pre-teen ballplayer was put into a box full of money, a blower was turned on to send that money flying around, and the kid had to try and grab as much money as possible, which he (or she) would be able to keep.

There were many thoughts on strategy for this. Some kids thought you should try to trap it against the sides of the box and then pull it on. Others thought you should just grab wildly and hope for the best. A few suggested using a loose jersey as a net to catch the dollars and then try to grab from the “net” since you were only allowed to keep the money you had in your hands. Still others thought that it was stupid and that you should just keep the entrance fee and use it to buy a candy bar from the concession stand.

That last group, while probably wise beyond their years, were absolutely no fun.

And then there was the question of what you’d do with the money. Maybe you’d use it to buy candy at the concession stand (always a great choice), maybe you’d rent a video game (this was back when there were actual stores that rented video games), or maybe you’d just put it into your piggy bank.

When I walked in to the box, all those years ago, I wasn’t sure what my strategy was. I think it was a mixture of the various strategies. And I can’t remember what I used the money I got for. Heck, I can’t even remember how much money I grabbed, period.

And yet, despite the fact that I’ve forgotten the end result, I still can remember that big box that sent money flying around you…. a piece of childhood and Little League.

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At 5 AM: A “Songs of October” Update

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

The Best of 2014: Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 Million Dollars in perspective

Posted on December 15, 2014 by danglickman

This article was originally published on November 15, 2014:

Giancarlo Stanton will, likely, get $325 million dollars in exchange for playing for the Miami Marlins for 13 more years (assuming he doesn’t get traded or opts out).

That, scientifically, is known as a buttload of money. How much money? Let’s go through it…

$500 Million: The value of the Miami Marlins, according to Forbes. Yes, Jeffrey Loria is basically saying that Giancarlo Stanton represents 65% of the value of the team itself.

It is over 20 times Babe Ruth‘s career earnings after inflation.

It is over 1.6 times Ken Griffey Jr.’s career earnings after inflation.

It is over 1.2 times Barry Bonds‘ career earnings after inflation.

$311 Million: The GDP of Sao Tome and Principe, a island nation in the Gulf of Guinea

$785.20: The amount of money every person in the City of Miami would receive if Giancarlo’s next contract was split up equally amongst them.

Giancarlo would be able to buy eight 1962-63 Ferrari 250 GTOs (which sold for $38 million dollars in August) with his proposed new contract’s money.

$294 Million: The cost, adjusted for inflation, of Titanic, the second most expensive (when adjusted for inflation) movie production of all time.

812.5 years: How long the President of United States would have to be in office to make that amount of money ($325 million) from the job.

$292,198,327: Total salary earnings (without inflation) of Shaquille O’Neil over his entire NBA career.

10: The number of NHL franchises, according to Forbes, with a value below $325 million dollars.

All of them: The number of MLS teams, according to Forbes, with a value below $325 million dollars. If he were in a soccer sort of mood, Giancarlo could afford to buy both the most and the third most valuable MLS team at the same time with the money he will earn over his next deal.

The original cost to build Fenway Park was $650,000 dollars, which is $15.9 million dollars when adjusted for inflation. That means that Giancarlo Stanton over the span of his hypothetical new contract would be able to build 20 Fenway Parks circa 1912, and he’d have enough money left to do just under half of a 21st.

$25 Million: How much Giancarlo would make in an average year under his new contract.

$10 Million: GDP of the island country of Niue. It would take Niue two and a half years of it’s entire gross domestic product to pay for one year of Giancarlo Stanton.

I don’t think anyone can imagine how big Mike Trout‘s deal will be if this is anything to go on.

Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 Million Dollars in perspective

Posted on November 15, 2014 by danglickman