As all yall know, I have 3 young sons and am raising my niece as well. I read over and over again that pretty much as a rule, the children who do best in school and in life are fed a good breakfast before school, eat dinner with the rest of the family, and their mean, cruel Mamis (and Daddys – let me not be sexist here) make them go to bed and get enough sleep. Oh yeah – and parents make sure they get plenty, but not too much NUTRITIOUS food, so they will be healthy and grow to their full potential. And it is unbelieveable how much food growing children eat – and as my Mama warns me – you just wait until they are teenagers because teenage boys will eat a huge dinner, then complain that they are hungry 5 minutes later.

I believe it because they often do it already, and they aren’t even teenagers yet. It is amazing how much I spend on food every week – AND I don’t buy junk or sodas neither.

So I was dumbfounded to read that minor leaguers are given $20.00/day for meal money, most of which they have to pay to a clubhouse manager who may or may not even bother to get decent food – often they have pizza or other greasy, carbohydrate rich, nutrient poor food.

This is what minor leaguers are paid:

Rookie League, A ball short season: $850/month x 3 months = $2550/year
A ball long season: $1050/month x 5 months = $5250/year
AA: $1500/month x 5 months = $7500/yr
AAA: $2150/mo x 5 months = $10,750/yr

I know that these are all first year salaries, and that minor leaguers with more years experience are paid more – sometimes not much more, until AAA, BUT the players have to pay all their rent, equipment, clothes, everything out of that meager amount. Sure I know that guys picked in the first 2 rounds get enough bonus money to buy decent food and decent housing, but the rest?

What exactly kind of nutrition do you think an 18-22 year old is going to be able to obtain on 25 bucks a day, most of which, as I said, goes to the clubhouse manager who may or may not procure nutritious food. The only way they can actually get a LOT of calories – and remember, they are not in they mama basement reading, they are under a great deal of stress, they are athletes, and most important, they are still growing adolescents.

I don’t get this, I really don’t. What on earth is the point of squeezing the food budget for young males? Why half starve them? Survival of the fittest? They figure the guys in the first 2 rounds are the only ones they care about anyhow and the rest of the players are just the supporting cast so who cares what happens to them? What is the point of THAT? Why not try to get the most, the best out of the players you DO bother to draft? Would it be a terrible thing if an Organization was able to create, say, 6 major league quality players a year instead of none or 1 or 2?

It couldn’t possibly cost a major league club that much to pay to feed their players quality food, at least at home. The better the nutrition, the better the performance. EVERY adult does better when his/her nutrition is optimal. You don’t put kerosene in a performance car, so why put junk and crap in a high performance athlete?

Look, I know that the draft really IS a crapshoot, for the most part, and that many first rounders get to the major leagues ONLY because they were first rounders – if some 30th rounder had the same stats, he wouldn’t be treated the same. But since it IS a crapshoot, why on earth not try to increase the odds?

sigh

I suppose it is the habit of billionaires to pinch pennies, to try to continue to get everything for nothing, to consider generosity and decency as character flaws. Perhaps they think that athletes who are fed decently will lose their hunger to play MLB, their competitive edges. But most likely, they simply don’t care and figure that there will be those who are married to rich women or who have rich families who will see that their sons are decently fed, and that the remainder will either be cannon fodder or will survive on crap.

One of these days, some number cruncher will convince some billionaire that pocket change invested in good food will produce more and better ballplayers, who will be younger, healthier and CHEAPER and perhaps THAT will spur change.

Tags: Houston Astros, MLB

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 9:23 am and is filed under Astros baseball, spring training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.