A longtime resident of Uxbridge, Ted Barris has written professionally for 40 years - for radio, television, magazines and newspapers. The "Barris Beat" column began in the 1950s when his father Alex wrote for the Globe and Mail. Ted continues the tradition of offering a positive view of his community. He has written 16 non-fiction books of Canadian history and teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto.
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Numbed by the numbers
Over the weekend, the media reported an unbelievable milestone in sports history. The Washington Redskins (a fabled franchise in the National Football League) announced it had completed negotiations with Albert Haynesworth and agreed to a seven-year service contract with him. By autographing that contract, the 27-year-old defensive tackle had guaranteed himself $100 million.
“Wow! Amazing!” Haynesworth is reported to have said.
Wow and amazing don't even begin to explain my reaction. I suddenly realized that professional athletes' salaries have rocketed into such elevated levels of the stratosphere, that I can't comprehend them anymore. I know this will sound cliché, but the thought that a man barely a quarter-century old could get paid the equivalent of the total value of all the real estate on my street for sacking quarterbacks, made me shake my head in amazement, incredulity and some anger. What's more, after a little digging, I discovered that Haynesworth wasn't the first, but the seventh NFL player, to “be worth” more than $100 million.
But I had to give my head a shake again to recognize my naiveté. Multi-million-dollar pro sport contracts have been making our heads spin for years. Whether to golf's Tiger Woods, basketball's Shaquille O'Neal, racing's Michael Schumacher, tennis's Andre Agassi, or baseball's Alex Rodriguez, compensation in the professional sporting world has gone from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous. The Forbes.com website, for instance, indicates that overall the 50 highest wage-earners in pro sport, last year, pulled in $1.1 billion. In other words, inflated numbers in sports salaries are nothing new. I mean I'm old enough to remember Toronto's NHL deal with Frank Mahovlich in 1962, when Maple Leafs' coach Punch Imlack declared:
“The Big M is hockey's first million-dollar player!”
The truth is, all these astronomical numbers appear meaningless when they get up into seven or ten digits. They're numbing to the point that we don't even react to them anymore. Look at the numbers associated with gasoline prices today. Once upon a time, Canadian drivers would travel to the next town or across the city to save half a cent per litre. After last summer's roller-coaster ride, when fuel climbed to as high as $1.50 and $1.60 per litre, today we hardly bat an eye when MP Dan McTeague informs us via the media that gas prices will rise or fall three or four cents overnight.
I think I first noticed that numbers had lost their meaning in the days following the Boxing Day underwater earthquake in South Asia in 2004. It was the resulting tsunami that killed more than 225,000 people (also a nearly incomprehensible number) and suddenly, magically the world's purse strings loosened. In the weeks following, it seemed, wealthy nations began pledging relief money such as the world had never seen. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, then millions, poured from government coffers and individual citizens' credit card and bank accounts to help the victims. With the one exception perhaps of Ethiopian famine relief, I don't think I had witnessed such an outpouring of concern or donations. But again the figures seemed to skyrocket to near disbelief.
Then came the economic downturn last fall - the one that no western government anticipated, but every western government figures it can resolve with promises of massive spending. I mean, when the U.S. Congress began talking about a $787 billion stimulus package and the Canadian government tossed around a $40 billion figure to jump-start the economy, my head started spinning again. Didn't we just spend the last decade tightening the nation's belts to pay our way out of indebtedness? Wasn't the notion of running a deficit as abhorrent as the plague? And suddenly the zeros began piling up again. And again, I lost count.
By the way, I discovered recently that a billion is a lot different in North America than it is in Britain. Seriously. In the U.S. and Canada it's generally understood that a billion is a thousand million. And if you can't get your head around that, please note, in the U.K. a billion is a million million. And we thought our climbing dollar was nearly at par with the euro last summer. Ha!
Then, just when I thought I'd seen it all when it came to astronomical numbers, on Tuesday morning the Ontario Provincial Police stopped a guy on Highway 400. He'd been speeding through the night in his Infiniti G35. Not doing 150 kilometres per hour. Not even 180 (which is where my speedometer stops). This guy was clocked at 250 km/h.
I guess I'm not the only one numbed by numbers.
