What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Our “market mania” age has had an immense impact on sport, such as baseball (201). Players’ salaries have increased immensely in the last 50 years, as have the costs of seats for spectators.

In the 1980s, the autographed memorabilia of sports’ stars came to be viewed as marketable goods. This increased throughout the 1990s, particularly for memorabilia used in games, such as Mark McGwire’s record-setting 70th home-run ball, which was sold at auction in 1998 for $3 million.

A ball caught at a 2001 game by a fan, and pulled away by another fan, resulted in a lengthy legal battle.

The memorabilia market is now a billion-dollar industry. Even the dirt at stadiums where successful players stood and played is a sellable item: $10 million of Yankee Stadium dirt has been sold.

In many cases, stadiums have been renamed after sponsoring companies. This language even often applies to the wording commentators use, such as Arizona home runs being called a “Bank One blast” (209).