Why Do Baseball Players Make So Much?

from CBSNews.com

Baseball plays out from one end of the country to the other — from one end of the lifespan to the other. It’s a game, a sport and a pastime.

But at the highest levels, it is a $6 billion a year business where the extraordinary skill and talent of the best reaps once unimaginable rewards. The minimum wage in major league baseball is almost $400,000 more than half the players make $1 million or more. New York Yankees’ third baseman Alex Rodriguez takes in $25 million — some 500 times what a teacher or a cop or a paramedic makes.

“My wife’s a school teacher, and she works 12 hours a day, 10 months a yearand she doesn’t make a whole lot of money," baseball fan Tom Nighe told CBS News correspondent Jeff Greenfield. "And it is sort of disheartening to see a ballplayers make the kind of salary they do when a teacher doesn’t make what they really deserve.”

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Why does Alex Rodriguez make 500 times what a teacher makes? The last time I checked, no one was willing to pay $100 to watch a teacher do her job for 3 hours.