a million per paycheck

Can you believe that once upon a time, professional athletes worked off-season jobs just to make ends meet? I remember reading an article about a recent ballplayer saying that he and his wife managed to make ends meet back when he was making only a rookies' salary, when rookie salaries were, oh, a quarter of a million dollars per year (at least). What, in addition to the per diem you got for food on road trips? Isn't that what doctors and surgeons make?

And now the salaries of professional athletes can be so big, are they even capable of boggling the mind anymore? Well, how about the number 26? That's my favorite litmus test for a super-duper salary. One that's beyond the beyond. When a seven-figure salary isn't enough. When earning a six-figure salary is still major buku bucks for us average folks. Why 26? Because 26 is half of 52, as in 52 weeks in a year. And when the typical paycheck is issued every two weeks. Hence, 26 paychecks per year. So 26 million dollars per year means a million dollars per paycheck.

Which brings me to Alex Rodriguez. Who I believe signed a contract to get paid more than 1 million dollars every two weeks (averaging his salary out over a year). Can you imagine? Even nowadays, the word 'millionaire' still stirs up strong emotions, and here's a guy getting paid a million dollars every two weeks to play baseball. So okay, he owes more in taxes than most people earn in several lifetimes; well, I'd still rather take the million dollars per paycheck, thank you very much.

Which means that the 5-year, 125 million dollar contract that Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies recently signed falls just short of 1 million dollars every two weeks - sorry, dude, maybe next time.