Hey Ichiro—Can You Loan Me $20?

They were the F-words heard around the world. An unguarded moment that will live on in perpetuity within the blogosphere. The clip that will be watched and enjoyed by sport fans forever on YouTube.

When recently-fired Seattle Mariners manager John McLaren went "on the record" with his recent cussing fit, I felt nothing but empathy. I cussed just like that back in 2004 when I learned how much the Mariners organization had spent on the acquisition of Richie Sexson.

For those who may have forgotten, that was the five-year, $50 million deal with the $6 million signing bonus. Around the same time, the Mariners spent $65 million on Adrian Beltre.

I had long been aware of the ridiculous sums of money shoveled into the bank accounts of professional athletes. The determination and sacrifice needed to be a dedicated, entertaining, steroid-free athlete should be well compensated.

In '04 my favored sport of choice, Formula One racing, awarded $40 million to then world-champion Michael Schumacher for one single season, making him the highest-paid athlete on the planet. Current F1 champ Kimi Raikkonen will earn $1 million per week from team Ferrari this season. Yes, per week.

Ichiro Suzuki gets $12 million per season in addition to a housing allowance of $32,000, a new Jeep or Mercedes-Benz SUV, four round-trip tickets between Japan and the United States each year for his family, a personal trainer and an interpreter.

Even so, I can clearly remember how the news of the Sexson/Beltre deals made my brain hurt. I felt a vague sense of doom, as if I knew something wasn't right.

Mariners chairman Howard Lincoln offered us a method behind the money madness at the time, saying: "Right now, we're in the process of spending a lot of money, and we're not done."

So, Howard -- are you done now? I think you are done now. Put your pen and checkbook on the desk and slowly back away with your hands up.

The fix for the Mariners is going to have to involve a Metamucil-powered organic cleansing of whatever it was that caused the team to disintegrate, and I don't know if that can be bought.

As for basketball, all this Sonics mess leaves me slack-jawed and hollow-eyed. The trauma and drama has become tedious. I feel sorry for the fans who are being held hostage by the bureaucracy of it all.

While we're at it, let's have a peek at the 2008-09 season paychecks for some of the Sonics:

According to a report on hoopshype.com, Chris Wilcox gets the biggest gold purse with an annual salary of $6.75 million. Luke Ridnour falls right behind with $6.5 million. Nick Collison slots in after Ridnour with $6.25 million and so on and so forth until we get to the last guy on the roster, the bottom rung of the ladder. I won't embarrass him by naming names, but this pathetic earner will manage to bring in just $1.71 million.

That amount would more than pay for two season's worth of salaries for the entire Seattle Storm, a team that was able to secure a championship title in 2004.

Want some more homegrown champions? Meet the Rat City Roller Girls roller derby league. They, too, find themselves in a fight -- not for a brand new billion-dollar state-of-the-art arena, but for time in an airplane hangar in Seattle's Magnuson Park.

This particular hangar may be refurbished then turned over to a corporation that will most likely favor youth sports over roller derby for the prime Saturday afternoon rentals.

I have been a sideline announcer for the league for three seasons, and absolutely love it. While announcers, sound crew and concessionaires are paid a stipend for their time, RCRG is a nonprofit, all-volunteer, female-owned and operated LLC with no employees. All the profits go back into their programs to support their mission statement.

Not one skater is paid.

The energy and the love of the sport that those skaters have is infectious when watching derby, and that is most definitely not for sale.