Carl Crawford is the left-fielder for the Tampa Bay Rays, for now.
This time next year Rays fans may have to get used to life without the franchise left-fielder. Crawford is in the last year of his contract and looks to command quite a hefty salary in the free-agent market.
Payroll concerns have the Rays management searching for answers on how to cut back and one of the possibilities is getting rid of the best player Tampa Bay has ever had.
Perhaps as you grow older you recognize the business behind sports or as I like to think of it the dark side of sports.
When you’re young it’s only about the game and what happened on the field of play. When you grow up sports can turn into a Jekyll and Hyde industry. Money rules sports now, not the games themselves. The business of American sports has evolved from children’s games to billion dollar industries.
The wave of industry swept through American sports and took the athletes’ innocence along with it. Players lost their innocence with the power of the mighty dollar. The free-agent market resembles a high-priced auction where only the big money teams (Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs) win the big name players. Staying with one team for an entire career is an archaic concept. Now, some athletes change teams every year.
The 1990’s and early 2000’s will go down as the sports world’s Roaring Twenties. These were the decades when sports came to the forefront of American consumer culture. Now the major sports leagues are dealing with the whiplash of the roller coaster that ran off the track.
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