Professional Malingerer
Posted by Doug Groene at 3/4/2008 11:40 AM and is filed under uncategorized 
Word of the Day: MALINGER (muh-ling'-ger), VERB: Pretend to be sick or injured to avoid duties.
As a kid, like most little boys, I always dreamed of being a professional athlete someday. But unlike other kids, I never wanted to be a star athlete. I never wanted to be Joe Montana, throwing the winning touchdown in the Superbowl or Kirk Gibson, smacking a huge World Series home run. Instead, I dreamed of being the 3rd stringer that nobody has ever heard of, who sits comfortably at the end of the bench, never gets in a real game, and collects the league minimum salary. I was a smart kid. The league minimum salary in the lowest paying sport, hockey, is now $450,000. For doing absolutely nothing (perhaps fetching Gatorade every so often for the real players) these bench warmers make the same salary as partners in large law firms- lawyers who slave away 90 hours a week and who only see their wives every few months at conjugal visits in the firm trailer. These lucky, nameless, back-ups to the back-ups get paid over four times the salaries of less useful members of society like teachers, doctors, or police officers.
Needless to say, my current hero is Shawn Bates, a hockey "player." If you are not a fan of the New York Islanders hockey team, you have no doubt never heard of Shawn Bates. If you are one of the estimated 423 Americans who IS a fan of the New York Islanders, you have also probably never heard of Shawn Bates. This is because he never plays. A hockey season consists of over 80 games. For several years, Bates would play the first ten or so games and then miss the rest of the season with a groin injury. According to the Islanders' announcers, if not medical science, a man has two groins- a left and a right. So Bates would switch off which one he injured each year. In fact he has had his groin talked about on TV more than any human not named Brittney Spears. This year he added a hip injury to the usual groin ailment and is now out for the season after playing a grand total of 2 games. I am not saying he is a malingerer. Perhaps his injuries are real. But what I do know is that he never plays and makes an annual salary of-I am not making this up-$1,200,000! For the math challenged, that is over a million dollars, enough to afford a huge mansion with a butler (who, needless to say, calls him "Master Bates").
As a kid, like most little boys, I always dreamed of being a professional athlete someday. But unlike other kids, I never wanted to be a star athlete. I never wanted to be Joe Montana, throwing the winning touchdown in the Superbowl or Kirk Gibson, smacking a huge World Series home run. Instead, I dreamed of being the 3rd stringer that nobody has ever heard of, who sits comfortably at the end of the bench, never gets in a real game, and collects the league minimum salary. I was a smart kid. The league minimum salary in the lowest paying sport, hockey, is now $450,000. For doing absolutely nothing (perhaps fetching Gatorade every so often for the real players) these bench warmers make the same salary as partners in large law firms- lawyers who slave away 90 hours a week and who only see their wives every few months at conjugal visits in the firm trailer. These lucky, nameless, back-ups to the back-ups get paid over four times the salaries of less useful members of society like teachers, doctors, or police officers.
Needless to say, my current hero is Shawn Bates, a hockey "player." If you are not a fan of the New York Islanders hockey team, you have no doubt never heard of Shawn Bates. If you are one of the estimated 423 Americans who IS a fan of the New York Islanders, you have also probably never heard of Shawn Bates. This is because he never plays. A hockey season consists of over 80 games. For several years, Bates would play the first ten or so games and then miss the rest of the season with a groin injury. According to the Islanders' announcers, if not medical science, a man has two groins- a left and a right. So Bates would switch off which one he injured each year. In fact he has had his groin talked about on TV more than any human not named Brittney Spears. This year he added a hip injury to the usual groin ailment and is now out for the season after playing a grand total of 2 games. I am not saying he is a malingerer. Perhaps his injuries are real. But what I do know is that he never plays and makes an annual salary of-I am not making this up-$1,200,000! For the math challenged, that is over a million dollars, enough to afford a huge mansion with a butler (who, needless to say, calls him "Master Bates").
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