Sport millionaires with cash worries

World financial crisis could end the gravy train for big timers.... and the Palin family clothing woes.

DAVID YOUNG OUR MAN IN PANAMA
ourman@laestrella.com.pa

Concern over this sad state of affairs has already been expressed by golfing great Phil Mickleson, who along with many of his multi-millionaire compatriots is afraid that with the world financial crisis, tournament funds may dry up.

Now if that spreads to other sports, we might see a downturn in the inflated salaries paid to sports stars, from baseball and basketball to soccer and now even cricket. And it’s all reflected in the ticket prices. A couple taking two kids to a baseball game, can shell out $200 to $300 for one game, by the time they add in the over-priced hot dogs and drinks. And just ask a Londoner what it costs to get a good seat to watch 22 multi-millionaires kick a soccer ball around a field. Brain surgeons should be so lucky.

But with the world financial crisis and climbing unemployment, attendance will shrink, and maybe along the line, sports “heroes” may find their salaries shrinking to that of brain surgeons, and dad and mom will be able to see a game without having to get a loan from a bailed out bank.

SHE JUST WON’T GO AWAY. A reader pointed out yesterday, that I had promised not to mention SP, a governor from the north, unless she disclosed what has happened to the $150,000 worth of glad rags she acquired during the election campaign.

Well that figure is no longer valid according to Michael Shear of The Washington Post. On top of the $150,000 first cited Sarah Palin spent “tens of thousands of dollars” on more clothes, makeup and jewelry for herself and her family, including $40,000 in luxury goods for the First Dude. The campaign was charged for silk boxers, spray tanners and 13 suitcases to carry the designer duds, Shear added that one source said, “She was still receiving shipments of custom-designed underpinnings up to her ‘Saturday Night Live’ performance” in October.

Said Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: ”Silk boxers and custom-designed underpinnings? Sounds like Sarah and Todd were treating the vice presidential run as a second honeymoon.”

And Palin still wonders why the clothes were such a big issue. Unlike Panamanians running for office, she got her snout into the pork barrel before being elected. Dowd further noted: ”The Alaska governor, who now thinks she is even bigger than her vast state, has certainly not missed an opportunity to throw open the door to the national press this week, letting them hang in her Wasilla kitchen as she makes moose chili and cake and baby formula and hefty servings of spin.

“After her brutal transformation by the McCain campaign into a shopaholic, whack-job diva — “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” as one angry McCain aide characterized it to Newsweek — Palin is now trying to unmake that makeover and morph from uptown cloistered girl back to down-home accessible girl. Just hanging in the kitchen with her family and a bunch of camera crews, washing lettuce and washing John McCain and his tattling, gossiping sewing circle of aides right out of her fluffed-up hair.

“The same McCain aides who blasted the press as sexist for wondering if Palin was hopelessly over her head swiveled around and blasted Palin to the press as hopelessly over her head. The snippy McCain snipers once loved Palin’s sassy ability to burn Barack Obama and Joe Biden with snide little remarks.” $

Publicidad