Far be it from me that I would object to these players attempts at getting as much money as they can from the ballclubs that they play for. So many thousands of hopefuls never make it to the big leagues, and toil away their 20s while performing in relative obscurity in the minors, until they give up their dreams of baseball stardom, or more likely and all too often, their ballclubs decide that they no longer have any value even as organizational filler.
However, after seeing what the top-half earners make in professional sports, it is impossible to make any legit comparisons to those who were amongst the highest paid half even 20 years ago, and the vast majority of franchise owners want to do much better than to just break even, so these increased salaries and operating expenses then get mainly passed onto the fans-consumers, both directly and indirectly in the form of ever-higher costs/prices for most products, services, and event/entertainment tickets, even if the consumers are not casual observers or followers of sporting events.
To the average working stiff, the wages and salaries that are nowadays needed to maintain even a so-called "middle-class" lifestyle have not kept pace, even after factoring inflation into the cost of living. The ability has steadily decreased over the past 50 years for a 5-6 member family with only one source of income, like my parents had, to be able to afford to own a home, lease/own a newer vehicle, afford private schooling, rent/own a vacation cabin or cottage, purchase clothing, food, medical/dental/auto/home insurance, now along with the electronic gadgets that need to be replaced due to obsolescence or technological improvements every so often, many that also require monthly subscriptions for accessing the virtual "ether".
Perhaps some are not exactly a "necessity" ...but for those who have children of school age, they are often an educational and research requirement, in an ever more competitive and changing 21st century working world that increasingly expects, if not demands specialized skills, higher education, experience, and training.
