Should professional sports leagues, such as the MLB and NBA, implement a salary cap? This has become a rising issue in the last few years, involving players and the leagues and teams for which they play. Salary caps are an amount of money that a team is able to spend on its players. For instance, each team gets a 64 million dollar spending limit in which they have to divide between each player on the team. It has led to numerous lockouts and strikes by the players because they feel it is unfair. Salary caps in professional sports should be abolished because they effect player performance, are prone to abuse, and cause some players to be paid unfairly. Athletic ability is not only a talent, but a hard-earned trait for some athletes. Through days, months, and years of training, they prepare to perform to the best of their abilities on the playing field. Athletic performance has improved drastically from the years 1940 to 2000 (Lewis). Along with this increase of physical ability also came an increase in pay rates. There have been new systems set in place for athletes, such as free agency. The purpose of free agency is to enhance competition levels between players whom are fighting for an open spot on a …show more content…
Brent Mayne was a Major League player whom was paid $2.5 million over the course of a year, yet his batting average was well below the expected standard at only a .238 (Bradbury 75). Many other players who have higher capabilities than Mayne are paid less, the only difference being the name on their uniforms. The Houston Rockets signed a rookie for $6.2 million , while Charles Barkley, with years of experience, signed for a mere $75,000 a year with the Philadelphia 76ers (DiLasco). This is where collective bargaining plays an important role. Collective bargaining is trying