The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Brian Ojanpa

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September 18, 2009

Ex-ballplayer's muddled money quest befuddles

Pro athletes too often dwell in a tone-deaf bubble of entitlement. It’s as if vast sums of money have the counter effect of making them penny-ante and disconnected from the real world.

One of the best examples of this is former big-league ballplayer Pete Incaviglia’s quote in the early 1990s.

Arguing that baseball players aren’t overpaid, he said this:

“People think baseball players make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don’t realize that most of us only make $500,000.”

And who can forget former Minnesota Timberwolves player Latrell Sprewell’s plea for understanding when he said he was “insulted” by the team’s three-year $27 million offer.

“I got my family to feed,” he said.

This week, another ex-ballplayer, Shawon Dunston, reprised this sort of pettiness in magnificent fashion.

The former Chicago Cubs All-Star sent a handwritten letter to a U.S bankruptcy court objecting to the sale of the team because, he contends, the Cubs still owe him money.

The bankrupt Tribune Co., which owns the Cubs, has reached a deal to sell the team for $845 million. Dunston wants his dough before that happens.

Here’s what he wants: college education money he says was promised to him when he signed his contract out of high school in 1982.

The college education clause was standard in many contracts signed by top high school players and amounted to about $8,000 to $10,000 worth of tuition in the early 1980s.

The money was not paid to Dunston for a logical reason: He didn’t go to college.

Yet Dunston can’t seem to grasp this nuance. He wants money for doing something he didn’t do, nor has any intention of ever doing.

More to the point. he hardly needs the cash.

During the course of a 17-year career with four teams, he earned at least $24.5 million, a sum that could have bought him more than enough higher education to understand why that letter shouldn’t have been sent.

Dunston passed the buck on his act by laying it on a financial adviser, saying the guy told him to write it as a “formality,” although it’s unclear on which planet such formalities are viewed as rational.

When contacted later, Dunston laughed it off, saying he never expected to get the money, the Cubs don’t owe him a dime and, if anything, he owes them something for paying him during the two years he was disabled with a bad back.

You may now scratch your head. But I guarantee it won’t help. It will only be a formality.



Brian Ojanpa is a Free Press staff writer. Call him at 344-6316 or e-mail bojanpa@mankatofreepress.com.

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