MLB 2012: Curtis Granderson's College Degree Is More Elite Than His MVP Stats

Curtis Granderson is leading everyone in the MLB not named Josh Hamilton in home runs this season, but what I find to be more impressive is his college degree.

After all, there is an All-Star team assembled in the end midst of every season. In this season, however, it is a much more sizable minority to have a diploma from a university.

According to FoxSports.com, only 34 out of 917 players that have been on an MLB field this season have earned a college degree. That means that 96.3% of all MLB players now employed have not earned the honor.

This could be attributed to the fact that while the NBA asks for one year of college and the NFL asks for two years of college, the MLB has a different policy entirely. In the MLB, a player can declare for the MLB draft after graduating from high school, after any season of junior college, after their junior or senior seasons at a four-year college, or after any season during which they are at least 21 years old. These lenient rules allow young baseball players to seek professional success at a younger age.

Perhaps this is because of the lengthy season. Due to the injury risk with how long the professional season is, the body can only take so much wear and tear in their younger years. As players become larger, more athletic, and more competitive in the modern era, the injury risk of the game has escalated. In fact, we’ve seen stars as talented as Matt Kemp and Mariano Rivera land on the disabled list in the past two weeks alone.

The older an individual gets, the harder it will be for the body to recover from injuries, making it harder to compete on the same level as their colleagues.

If the MLB allows them to declare for the MLB draft out of high school, it’s to be expected that many of them will. After all, they’re reading ESPN and seeing headlines expressing the contracts of individuals like Albert Pujols. This offseason, Pujols signed a ten-year, $240 million deal.

Pujols, however, is the exception, not the rule. The media hopes to make Pujols’ story out as an example of how America is this fabled “land of opportunity” or how upward mobility is a genuinely real theme of our nation.

Out of high school, everyone hopes to become the next Albert Pujols and many think that they are.

Albert Pujols is the exception, not the rule.

Take Prince Fielder. This offseason, Fielder signed a nine-year, $214 million deal.

Fielder, however, had a unique advantage. Fielder was born into the home of an MLB player, Cecil Fielder, and was blessed with the opportunities granted to him by being the son of such a talented and rich man. Fielder would have had hitting lessons and exposure to the big leagues by the time he was able to walk and talk.

Not everyone has that opportunity.

People see the astronomical contracts of these baseball players like Fielder and Pujols, get blinded by the white light and think that everyone can play in the MLB. They play baseball in high school and ignore academic endeavors. They think that professional baseball is the only way that they can make money. It excites them, and the game they’ve been playing since they were five years old can become their business and their profession.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 311,591,917 people live in the United States of America. Only 917 of them have played in an MLB game this season. That overwhelmingly small minority is almost infinite, and would make activists of the “Occupy” movement cringe.

Yet, every year, we repeat the same myth of American opportunity. Just like Albert Pujols, you too can get rich out of high school if you are incredibly good at one thing! Unfortunately, this is a minority and upward mobility is generally false of limited to one social class.

Even if you’re drafted, there’s no guarantee that you’ll make it to the next level and the odds do not work in your favor. An estimated 90 percent of all professional baseball players never actually make it to the MLB. Of those, only a few become stars. The minimum salary for a MLB player is $400,000 per season (and most make much more than that), whereas a minor league baseball player would be considered lucky to make $10,000 a year.

In this article on minor league baseball, we read about the trials and tribulations of the Trenton Thunder—the Double-A affiliate of the New York Yankees.

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“From May to August, where games are scheduled nearly every day, players on the Trenton Thunder were asked to be at the ballpark an average of 28 days per month. For an average night game played at 7 p.m., many players report at 12 p.m. to lift weights and do various early work (drills, early hitting, etc.). With the average game lasting nearly three hours, players are on the clock ten hours a day, which translates to 280 hours over the course of an average month.”

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And the numbers come alive even more shockingly.

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“In those same five states, the hourly minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. For a player making the Double-A minimum of $1,700 a month, he’ll earn $6.07 an hour while on the job.“

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A college education would help these student-athletes understand that the world has more options than professional baseball, and the statistical probability of making it to the show is not in your favor.

Baseball players should pursue their dreams. Kids that grew up idolizing the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. or Randy Johnson should be encouraged, not discouraged, to make these heroes their reality.

But if they have the option of doing so before earning a college degree, we’ve seen than most will. That’s the ultimate tragedy here. By inherently discouraging the obtainment of a college degree, we are falsifying the facts and skewing the reality of the situation at hand. We should be helping these athletes—exposing them to the world, not just the world of baseball.

A college degree is humbling achievement, and the experience illuminates many truths of the world that would otherwise go undiscovered. We live in a society in which it is entirely predictable to base future employment off of a college degree, as well. According to Gallup.com, 73 percent of college graduates are employed full-time. Only 58 percent of people who obtained a high school diploma or less, however, can say they have that same stability.

As the economy churns into unstable waters, a job is one of the most important things we can hope for. Baseball players may not be playing baseball their entire life. It’s the simple and ugly truth.

Curtis Granderson, who earned his college degree while in the minor leagues and is now considering the path of grad school at the University of Chicago, sets a shining example of the importance of balancing an education with the sport that he loves. If young people follow his lead, they will be much more prepared for the road that they are following.

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