Thursday, July 19, 2007

Ichiro must be having trouble affording a house

There's an interesting bunch of quirks in Ichiro's new 5-year, $90 million contract. The first you may be familiar with - and that is that $25 million of the contract will be deferred so that the team will not have to pay it off in full until 2032. This helps decrease the annual average salary the Mariners will be paying him. That's fine.

But now it starts to get a little ridiculous.

He gets a housing allowance of $32,000 next year, and the amount will rise by $1,000 each year. He also will be provided with either a new Jeep or Mercedes SUV by the team. He also gets four first-class round trip tickets from Japan each year for his family. Provisions for the Mariners to give him a personal trainer and an interpreter have been continued as well.

Look, I'm all for athletes pulling in whatever they can, but this is nuts. He's already getting $90 million, I think he should be able to afford a house without assistance.

It's probably a good thing Ichiro doesn't speak English, because if he did, he probably wouldn't like what his teammates are in all likelihood saying about this insane contract. And all this for a singles hitter who never walks. Simply incredible.

-WCK

2 comments:

  1. Although it may seem crazy, but after working for a major league franchise for several years, even lesser named players get a housing allowance since most players don't live in the city they play in in the offseason. There are other perks that are way more out there than this one...trust me!!!

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