Learning to Love Pro Wrestling Again

When I was 9 years old I got my first taste of something my cousin kept talking about; professional wrestling. Watching the street fight between Bret Hart and Steve Austin instantly had me hooked for years to come. Like a lot of wrestling fans, the boom of the 90's didn't keep me going into the 00's and by 2004 or so I had stopped watching nearly completely. I still would watch a little from time to time and bought the games each year and even dabbled in some of the independent promotions, but my heart was out of it. That cousin of mine never lost his love though and in 2008 when Summerslam was going to be just a few hours away he convinced me to buy a ticket and road-trip up for the show.

For the first time in years, I was a big wrestling fan for at least one more night. An indy darling turned WWE superstar (and my favorite wrestler at the time) in CM Punk was defending his World Heavyweight title, the two biggest stars at the time in John Cena and Batista were facing off one-on-one for the first time and in the main event Edge was facing The Undertaker in a Hell In A Cell match. I hadn't been paying enough attention to the product to know the storylines going into the matches but I knew that I was in for a memorable night. My favorite CM Punk kept his title, Batista reversed a top rope leg drop into a Batista Bomb, and Undertaker sent Edge straight to Hell.

I'd love to tell you that I jumped right back in but wrestling had left me wanting more before and I wasn't about to jump right back in, choosing instead to dip my toe in the water and go from there. It wasn't until my birthday in 2009 that I truly got pulled back in. There was a WWE “reality” show called NXT and the first season had just wrapped up with Wade Barrett winning a WWE contract. That next week everyone from NXT ambushed John Cena and CM Punk and proceeded to destroy everyone and everything in their path. It was the first truly shocking and huge angle they had run in a long time and it was awesome. I really thought Daniel Bryan (one of the most technically sound wrestlers on the planet by the way) and company were going to go into the stands Artest style. It was a big enough moment I was going to start paying quite a bit more attention to what was going on from week-to-week.

Wrestling obviously isn't everyone's cup of tea and it isn't without it's huge faults, but if you look close enough there are a lot of good things that even the old fan can come back and truly enjoy. CM Punk is probably the best thing in wrestling right now, being the evil mastermind and playing the role as anyone has in a long, long time. Alberto Del Rio has the kind of cocky smile a grandmother would like to smack off his face and The Miz from MTV fame has put in the time to become one of the brightest young stars in the business. We've also got the previously mentioned Daniel Bryan and a new star from Mexico in Sin Cara learning the ropes while R-Truth is losing his mind much to our delight. If you used to like wrestling but don't anymore the water is fine once again, just dip your toe in and find out for yourself.

Learning to Live with LeBron James

When I turned 23 years old last week, I only wanted three things. A nice little get together with the family, go watch The Hangover 2 (I had seen the first in theaters for my 21^st birthday) and to have the Mavericks even the series 2-2 with the villains from South Beach. Thanks in large part to LeBron James once again failing to rise to the occasion, my birthday trifecta went off without a hitch and I couldn’t have been happier. I have loved rooting against this Miami team as much as anyone else not from Cleveland this year. If you weren't a Miami fan there was no way you could root for them after the Decision and the welcoming celebration that followed. But after watching LeBron and company come up short again and again and then the media latching on to his corpse I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

LeBron is going to go down as one of the greatest players to ever grace on a basketball court. The question we are all waiting on an answer for though is how high up the list he will climb. Everyone is waiting on that answer it seems except for LeBron James and can you really blame the guy? The Jordan and Magic comparisons have been steady, but I don’t remember either of them gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated before they even entered their senior year in high school. He got the attention started when he petitioned for entry into the NBA draft after just his junior year. But even if someone like Moses or even Garnett attempted the same thing the media frenzy would not have been the same as the one that started surrounding “The Chosen One”.

LeBron is really the first basketball mega-star to grow up completely in the world of technology we have today. The internet boom has been huge since LeBron entered the league in 2003. Youtube came along in 2005, just in time for everyone with an internet connection to easily find clips of King James doing something that astounded them. He was a superstar on every level and was treated as such so things like a regular childhood and learning humility simply didn’t end up happening for him.

So what did he do after that senior season he was forced into having? He got to the NBA and everyone continued to anoint him the heir apparent to if not Jordan at least Kobe Bryant as the best player in the world. LeBron’s body continued to mature and thus became even better as he spent his off-seasons taking time to build his brand and spend his free time enjoying himself for what might have been the first time since his teens.  But once he kept coming up short in the playoffs, things weren’t so much fun anymore. So what did he do? He made a decision.

That decision, as we all know, has permanently shaped the way LeBron will be remembered. He won’t ever be on the level of Jordan or Magic, but he’ll most certainly be in the top 5-10 wing players to have ever played the game. Obviously, that is good enough for him, so why can’t it be good enough for us? Greatness only comes around so often and when it does, it is something to tell your grandkids about. I’ll tell my little girl about the time I watched LeBron drop 48 points on the Pistons. I’ll tell her about watching him hit that 3 point shot to beat Orlando a few years ago. And whatever other moments of greatness he has I’m sure I’ll remember them fondly. With his decision though, he insured that the moments of greatness will be just that though, moments. And maybe we feel robbed that he hasn’t put on that superstar cape and attempted to save the NBA single handedly. We don’t like the idea he tried to take a short-cut to a ring because that’s not what a player in his prime does. He doesn’t care.

And in not caring, he ensures he won’t be revered like Jordan or Magic or Bird. He won’t become legendary like Wilt and Russell. He’s going to spend his prime playing in South Beach with two of his closest friends in Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and he’s going to win at least one ring. Maybe he’ll even finally develop a post move or two now that Dirk and company have put those 7 championships on hold. He isn’t ever going to live up to what we had hoped for and as long as he is happy with that decision, I’m happy for him.

Pujols Should Be The First $300 Million Man

All off-season, with apologies to Cliff Lee, the biggest story in baseball was the contract negotiations between Albert Pujols and the St. Louis Cardinals. Baseball fans all across the country made up their minds rather quickly on whether or not they thought Pujols or any other athlete was really worth such a large amount of money. But with all of the talk about the numbers, one of the things rarely talked about in baseball circles was the numbers that we all had at our disposal and how that should effect the Cardinals upcoming decision on the greatest baseball player of our generation.

The Cardinals were bought by Bill DeWitt Jr. in 1995 for the nice, even, amount of $150 million dollars. A big investment of course, but one that has certainly proven to be a wise one. Forbes ranked the Cardinals at the end of last year as being worth $518 million dollars. That is a 245% increase over the last 17 years and means the team is worth $368 million more today than it was when DeWitt purchased them, or am increase of $21.6 million a year. Struggling to make ends meet is not something I think the Cardinals ownership is going to have to worry about for the foreseeable future and while that should be an assumption, it's also important to note just how much money this team is worth today compared to when the team was sold in 1995.

Team worth is only half of the picture though when it comes to crunching the numbers for the owners over the past 16 years. Forbes has done a wonderful job of compiling enough information for every team that they are able to tell us what the operating income (or profit) is for each team on a year-to-year basis. I looked back to the end of 1996, the end of the first year of ownership, to see just how the Cardinals have performed financially each year. Surprisingly enough, there have been a total of 5 years where the Cardinals lost money, including a staggering $11.1 million in 2004. But since 2006, things have turned around dramatically with the team posting earnings of $14.0, $21.5, $6.6, $12.8 and $19.8 the last 5 years. Since 1996 the team has made a total of $71 million dollars, an average of $4.4 million a year and an average of $14.9 million the past 5 years.

Right now, the Cardinals are paying Pujols 16 million dollars a year. Assuming the Cardinals make the same amount of money as they did on average the past 5 years, they would be right at breaking even for the year. The goal for any business is evident; to make money. Owners of a sports team though, and especially a team with fans like the Cardinals, are expected to compete. The DeWitt family has shown that they are willing to spend money to do that in the past so this certainly isn't a Florida Marlins situation. What could the Cardinals do to try and mitigate the blow of a 30 million dollar contract?

Lance Berkman is under contract this season for 8 million dollars and Kyle Lohse for 12 over the next two years. Adam Wainwright is scheduled to make 9 and 12 million in team options over the next two years but with his injury this year, you might be able to convince him to take a small pay cut. He's making almost 7 million this year so if you could get him for that over the next couple years you would have to consider that a success. Those are the most obvious options for saving money when it comes to the team and if you replaced Berkman and Lohse with guys that made 5 million a piece, that would still be a 10 million dollar difference once those two are off the books.

Also, in the years from 2006 to 2009 the Cardinals have averaged 43,767 fans per home game, or 3.5 million fans each year. The Cardinals fans love Pujols unconditionally and would hate to see him go, and I think it would be more than fair if the Cardinals added just one dollar to each ticket as a “Pujols tax” to help with the burden of such a large contract. If you did that, the contract would run the team 26.5 million a year and while that is still a massive amount, it certainly looks a lot more manageable then 30 million. And if you were going to pay any baseball player, wouldn't it be Pujols?

In his first 10 seasons he has never had less then 30 home runs or 100 runs batted in. He ranks in the top 15 all time in both OPS and adjusted-OPS and is most likely going to finish among the top 10 position players in the history of the sport. I could go on and on about his accomplishments but everyone that enjoys the game of baseball has heard time and again how he stacks up against the greatest players to ever play the game. What Pujols has achieved to start his career is unprecedented and if he can keep to the level of play he is accustomed to over the next 5 years he will be off to the best start ever for a baseball player. He would have 2850 hits, 1780 runs, 640 doubles, 612 home runs, and 1845 RBIs after 15 years. That would put him 42nd in hits, 18th in runs, 9th in doubles, 7th in home runs, and 11th in RBI's all-time, placing him ahead of many of the greatest hitters to ever swing a bat.

Even so, how are the Cardinals going to be able to pay such a high salary and still be competitive? Well for comparisons sake, the average salary of the top ten highest paid players in 2001 was 14.25 million and for this season it has ballooned up to 21.69 million, an increase of 7.44 million. Even if you only increase the number by 5 million which is below the average, that number would still be an average of 26.75 a year for a top ten salary guy. That number is very close to what the salary would be costing the Cardinals if they implemented the “Pujols tax” I mentioned earlier.

Finally, Alex Rodriguez is the player most closely associated with Albert Pujols. Both players have been huge successes since their careers began and Pujols is looking to take the title of highest paid baseball player that A-Rod has held onto since he signed that massive contract with the Texas Rangers. So in Rodriguez's first ten seasons, how much did he earn? From 1996-2005 he made $120 million dollars compared to $96 million for Pujols. Now remember that the $120 million is starting from 5 years earlier so it would translate to an even bigger difference. Pujols has been underpaid for his entire career. Combine that with all of the other data from above and honestly, I don't understand why the Cardinals wouldn't want to keep the best player in baseball, in their uniform for his entire career, no matter the cost.