New York Yankees' A.J. Burnett Contributing to Downfall of Civilization

When thinking about the amazing salaries being made by professional athletes today, it’s very easy to wonder about the concepts of scale and proportion and excess.

The lowest paid Major League Baseball player, for instance, makes $414,000 per season. The national average income in America, by comparison, is right around $47,000. 

The disparity is tremendous, and it’s the kind of gap, in a practical sense, that is very difficult to truly comprehend when you’re closer to the national average income than you are to the MLB minimum.

This column, regardless of the income disparity outlined above, would in less desperate times not be the place where you would find an argument in support of Marxist principles such as, for example, wealth redistribution.

Individuals who possess great and rare skill, physical or intellectual, who also have the ability to apply that great and rare skill, and who can find a market within which to practice their great and rare skill, deserve to be rewarded financially to the fullest extent that the market will allow. This is presuming, of course, that the great and rare skill in question is not, let’s say, robbing banks, dealing drugs, murdering for hire, or generally contributing to the downfall of civilization.

If you do not accept the basic truth that a great, rare skill should be rewarded financially in proportion to the greatness and rarity of it, then think about how you would feel if, tomorrow, for instance, you came up with a brilliant idea for a new kind of broom. Imagine it was the best broom in the history of brooms, and that everyone wanted to buy one immediately.

Would there ever come a point, if you’re being honest, where you would say enough is enough, stop giving me millions of dollars for buying my broom? That possibility is almost as absurd as having the government control how much money we earn and how much of it we get to keep, and we know that never happens. 

More to the point, let’s say your company came to you tomorrow and said that, as a result of some kind of miraculous market shift, your particular skill set was now being valued at a level significantly above where it’s traditionally been. The consequence of this development, they say, is that you will now be rewarded with a salary of $414,000 dollars per year.

Can you imagine yourself considering, under any circumstances, for any reason, turning down the increase? Of course not. You would do what everyone else would do, which is accept in salary what the market dictates your salary should be. You would wake up the next day a happy person, secure that you could better support your family's needs and more securely guarantee their future. That is reality, today, tomorrow, and every day after that.

With all of this said, though, there is still one incontrovertible, universal truth that cannot be ignored; A.J. Burnett, based on his performance during the 2010 and 2011 seasons, does not deserve his $16.5 million dollar annual salary in any way, shape, or form. 

Now, this may seem harsh, of course, and it may seem as if there is some hypocrisy in that statement. After all, A.J. Burnett does possess a great and rare physical skill: being able to throw a baseball with immense speed and, on occasion, even make it go somewhat near the general area he's aiming. He can apply this skill, for the most part, and there is of course a market within which he can practice this skill, the Major Leagues of professional baseball, to be exact.

As such, based on the theorem put forward above, he deserves to be rewarded financially to the fullest extent that the market will allow. In the case of A.J., though, this is right around the place where things get a little squishy.

Now, A.J. is probably a nice enough guy, well-liked by his teammates and all, and it's very difficult to imagine that its in his nature to carry out bank heists, control a drug empire, or sneak away between starts to off people. Professional baseball players are on the road a lot, and they also spend a lot of time training and playing in games and such, so finding the time to be a nefarious criminal, even if one was inclined to do so, would be nothing short of a huge logistical nightmare.

So, it seems clear that we can cross off those reasons for A.J. to have to forfeit his compensation. The desperate reality, though, is that due in large part to A.J.’s troubles, the New York Yankees have no bona fide second starter to rely on, which is not a good thing if you’re heading into a short playoff series in two months or so.

This leaves us, of course, searching for some kind of logical justification, again, using the above theorem as our guide, for preventing Mr. Burnett from collecting his millions. For that, good readers, we turn to a possibility that simply cannot be ignored: our good friend A.J. may, in fact, be contributing to the overall downfall of civilization.

Before dismissing this proposition outright, think it through. First, let us ask, in general terms, what exactly is civilization? Technically, civilization is defined as an advanced level of development in society that is marked by complex social and political organization, and material, scientific, and artistic progress. Just look at the words in that sentence: advanced level of development... organization... material, scientific, and artistic progress.

Now, let’s analyze A.J. over the 2010 and 2011 seasons. Surely, as hard as we might try, we cannot see any evidence of any form of development. If anything, we've seen regression, the kind of regression perhaps brought on by the knowledge that $82.5 million dollars is, in effect, already in the bank.

As for organization, if you’ve watched A.J. pitch over the past two seasons, or been subjected to that spectacle, as some would put it, you’d be hard pressed to detect even the slightest level of organized thought or action. Abject confusion is closer to the mark, actually. And what about progress, you say? Uhhhh, no.

So let’s review. We have in A.J. Burnett an individual who clearly possesses a rare and great skill, worthy of advanced compensation. He is certainly not a criminal in any way; in fact it appears he is clearly well-liked by his co-workers and supervisors. So far, it would seem, again, that there is truly no justification for diverting A.J.’s earnings for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. 

As we've established, however, despite these realities, it is clear that Mr. Burnett is routinely contributing to the downfall of civilization on a very predictable schedule, once every five days or so, in fact. He has shown no development, seems completely disorganized, and has made no progress, material, scientific, or artistic, that we can point to.

These are serious matters, and if we are to maintain any sense of order they must be dealt with here and now. If the rest of our world were not in such great shape, if the global economy, for instance, were not steamrolling along, or if we found ourselves with millions and millions of Americans out of work at some point, then perhaps we could ignore Mr. Burnett's transgressions. We cannot, though, and so, as much as it pains us and goes against our core beliefs, we must advocate for a position that we otherwise would not; the redistribution of Mr. Burnett's wealth.

As someone who possesses not a single great or rare skill, of course, save for the willingness to sacrifice greatly for others, this writer would be honored to stand up, for the good of civilization, and boldly take on the burden of relieving Mr. Burnett of his millions. There is little else that this writer can offer to the cause, and of course it would be a severe moral and ethical breach to ask others to share in this great sacrifice.

All that is asked of you, in return for the assumption of this burden, is some form of remembrance. Civilization will benefit from the infusion of spirit that results, and the faith of this columnist in civilization itself, as much as the bottom line of his bank account, will be forever restored.