They Lost The Game

So, who do you think got paid more to play one baseball game yesterday?  Metallica, or the entire New York Yankees roster?

You can't just let him have his moment, can you?

Well, Rivera can have his moment, but then I get mine, too.  That seems fair.  

Anyway, for those who were unaware, yesterday's game at Yankee Stadium was the final regular season home game for Yankees closer Mariano Rivera.  Most likely his final home game period, but the team is not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs yet...though V-Y day is not far away.  Prior to the game, they had a whole ceremony where people walked onto the field and handed him symbolic presents and retired his number and whatnot.  All pretty standard stuff, and credit where credit is due...deserving of Rivera's career.  

What was fairly unique to the day was the remarkably brief rock concert in the middle of the ceremony.  See, from fairly early in his career as a closer, Rivera would enter the home stadium from the bullpen to the sound of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" playing over the stadium loudspeakers.  So, for this final home game, Metallica themselves were provided a stage in center field and performed the song live while Rivera made his way to the field.  It was explained by the emcee of the ceremony that not only was this song symbolic of Rivera, but the fact that Rivera used it as his entrance theme is basically what made the song popular.  I'm not making that up.  Sure, the single itself has a platinum certification, and the album it's on has sold 22 million copies...but the New York Yankees are to thank for that.  (This sort of self-appointed superiority complex is part of why I hate the New York Yankees so much, but I digress.)  

Anyway, this whole episode got me to thinking...how much did they have to pay Metallica to show up in New York, disrupting whatever their tour schedule was, pop into center field, perform one song, then leave so a baseball game could be played?  The answer almost assuredly ends with the word "million," so I'm looking for a comparison point.  For that, we turn to the New York Yankees themselves.  The (by far) highest priced team in Major League Baseball, rings up a total of nearly $229 Million for the 2013 season.  Divide that by the 162 games in the schedule, and you end up with the team paying the players just over 1.4 Million dollars to play one single baseball game.  And they're not even going to make the playoffs.  And they have three players whose 2013 salary is more than the entire Houson Astros roster.  And they're not even going to make the playoffs.  

Anyway...while I'm certain that this was, minute-for-minute, the most lucrative concert in Metallica's career, I'm just a little curious who got paid more for that game.  

Incidentally, I've never liked the song "Enter Sandman," regardless of the Yankees.  Over the course of researching this Blag entry, I've come to find out that I can't even blame Metallica for it.  As it turns out, the song was lifted from a group called "Excel" who released it two years earlier..as a song called "Tapping Into The Emotional Void"  Thanks, Excel.