As long as sports have been played for money, someone has complained about how much of it the players receive. “Salaries must come down or the interest of the public must be increased in some way,” Albert Spalding, the owner of the Chicago White Stockings of baseball’s National League, said in 1881. “If one or the other does not happen, bankruptcy stares every team in the face.”

With the economy in free fall, warnings like Spalding’s should carry more weight than the usual grumbling about overpaid jocks. And yet, big numbers continue to dance across the sports pages. The Yankees offer $140 million to free-agent pitcher C.C. Sabathia. The Knicks pay disgruntled point guard Stephon Marbury $21 million to do nothing. Wide receiver Plaxico Burress of the Giants apparently cares so little about protecting his new $35 million contract that he lets a handgun go off in his sweat pants at a New York nightclub. Didn’t he know he was lucky to still have a job in these hard times?

The message for fans: recession or not, the gargantuan athlete’s salary isn’t going anywhere. As the outfielder and free agent Manny Ramirez put it after helping power the Los Angeles Dodgers to the playoffs: “Gas is up and so am I.”

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