Found a site where you can view all athletes career earning. Bring your vomit bag

[Zippy Chippy]

I really wish people would stop going to sporting events. I can't get over how much average players have made. Its mindboggling.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/

http://www.baseball-reference.com/

Type in any player on the search field and go all the way to the bottom to see career earnings.

I mean you have a player like Derrick Coleman who in my opinion was a very average player. Definitely underachieved and he made $94m in his career.

Someone like John Olerud who was a nice player, made nearly 70m.

Willie Mays. 1.8 mil

[Stillriledup]

This is why you start your son or daughter at the ripe old age of 0 into sports. You need to be Earl Woods or Richard Williams, your kid will thank you someday.

[Robert Goren]

This is why you start your son or daughter at the ripe old age of 0 into sports. You need to be Earl Woods or Richard Williams, your kid will thank you someday.Or they will hate your guts for robbing them of their childhood if they don't have the raw talent to make it. As somebody once said "treat your kids well, because they will be deciding when you go into a nursing home."

[OTM Al]

I really wish people would stop going to sporting events. I can't get over how much average players have made. Its mindboggling.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/

http://www.baseball-reference.com/

Type in any player on the search field and go all the way to the bottom to see career earnings.

I mean you have a player like Derrick Coleman who in my opinion was a very average player. Definitely underachieved and he made $94m in his career.

Someone like John Olerud who was a nice player, made nearly 70m.

Willie Mays. 1.8 mil

Every one of them is worth every dime they made because someone paid them. Why do people always seem to forget that part? If you're disgusted with what Mays made, then why don't you blame the system he played under rather than today's players.

[fiveouttasix]

By OTM Al's logic Jason Bay is worth 65 million just because the Mets were stupid enough to give it to him?

[OTM Al]

By OTM Al's logic Jason Bay is worth 65 million just because the Mets were stupid enough to give it to him?

Yep. Not talking value judgements here, just money. Ther market determines what you are worth and the market got Bay $65m.

[Marshall Bennett]

Good actors get paid almost as well if not better for a good movie and don't work nearly as hard. Look at what Oprah earned. If you're good enough to make it to the top, who's to say what they should earn. They'd be idiots to turn it down. You can hardly blame them.

[PhantomOnTour]

This is why you start your son or daughter at the ripe old age of 0 into sports. You need to be Earl Woods or Richard Williams, your kid will thank you someday.
Todd Marinovich and Jelena Dokic would disagree.

[Stillriledup]

Todd Marinovich and Jelena Dokic would disagree.

Oh please. Their failures had nothing to do with how they were raised. Marinovich will tell you that his 'hard' upbringing was the reason he failed, but that's just excuses, not the case. I bet he wasn't mad at his father when he was fooling around with hot chicks in high school or college as a star athlete.

You can't say those are 'bad parents' for putting their kids in a position to become rich and famous. This guy signed an NFL contract and made more money than he would have if he was a 9 to 5er.

Its just excuses, he made adult decisions and blamed his 'rough' upbringing for his mistakes.

[Canarsie]

I agree with Al it's a free market nobody's putting a gun to their head to pay them.

In the 4 top sports there are less than 5,000 people total. Out of that probably 500 don't even play that much. Even the players of the lowest levels in MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL have a skill set that few could ever achieve.

For every Tiger Woods how many do we not hear about who have failed? The odds of training a child from early youth to be successful in any sport are dim.

[Stillriledup]

I agree with Al it's a free market nobody's putting a gun to their head to pay them.

In the 4 top sports there are less than 5,000 people total. Out of that probably 500 don't even play that much. Even the players of the lowest levels in MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL have a skill set that few could ever achieve.

For every Tiger Woods how many do we not hear about who have failed? The odds of training a child from early youth to be successful in any sport are dim.

Parents have to be aware of how much talent their kid has and stop 'pushing' when they know there's no use. Also, the Earl Woods and Richard Williams examples are extreme, but i don't believe that you have to 'rob' a child of their childhood in order for them to get good at their 'chosen field'

I believe that its important to make sure your child is happy doing what he or she is doing and that they WANT to keep going. If you see your boy loves baseball and appears to be at least as talented as the next kid, than why not, why not let him see if he can go further.

There's a lot more to 'raising kids'. There are plenty of parents out there who push their kids hard and yet those kids don't turn out to be Marinovich.

[sandpit]

Oh please. Their failures had nothing to do with how they were raised. Marinovich will tell you that his 'hard' upbringing was the reason he failed, but that's just excuses, not the case. I bet he wasn't mad at his father when he was fooling around with hot chicks in high school or college as a star athlete.

You can't say those are 'bad parents' for putting their kids in a position to become rich and famous. This guy signed an NFL contract and made more money than he would have if he was a 9 to 5er.

Its just excuses, he made adult decisions and blamed his 'rough' upbringing for his mistakes.

I know nothing about Marinovich, but Dokic is a different story. Her dad is nuts and has been banned for life from both the Australian Open and Wimbledon. She disowned him a few years back; he's since been jailed and served some time for a combo of tax evasion and threatening to kill a judge or mayor in Serbia, where they are from. The early part of her career was stellar when she won the US Open Juniors and then destroyed then #1 Martin Hingis in the first round of Wimbledon as a qualifier. Though she won a handful of tourneys, she never looked happy. In the past five years, she's had tons of ups and downs due to depression directly caused by her abusive father. The young lady is a sweetheart who should have had someone besides her dad running her career, because with her tennis skills, it would have had far greater results.

[kingfin66]

A very good site for baseball contract information:

http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2005/01/seattle-mariners.html