Here’s What A Professional Baseball MVP’s Paycheck Looks Like

Dan Regester10 years ago

So some guy took a tour of Wrigley Field this week and found the pay stub of Pittsburgh Pirates’ centerfielder Andrew McCutchen just lying around the visitor’s clubhouse.

I get it. “What’s the big deal? He’s a professional ball player, of course his paycheck is astronomical.” But actually seeing the breakdown of what it looks like to reel in $400k every two weeks is still an unbelievable sight. Tax season has to be a nightmare with all of those state and city taxes that accumulate.

The biggest hidden gem in this picture is that McCutchen pays roughly $20,000 per month not to live in Pittsburgh.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

In Pittsburgh, where a Non-Resident Sports Facility Usage Fee was imposed in 2005, athletes and entertainers pour in an average of $3.7 million annually with a 3 percent fee on all income earned while performing in any venue built or maintained with public money. The teams pay the city directly and withhold the fee from their employees’ paychecks

That appears on the check as the “Pittsburgh Professional Athlete Fee” since McCutchen is a Florida resident. At first it might seem excessive to pay that kind of coin not to live in the Steel City, but that is until you remember “oh yeah, Pittsburgh is an absolute trash bag of a town.” It’s essentially a Charles Dickens novel brought to life. Giant factory smokestacks fill the air with smog, taking years off your life with every breath you take. You want to punch every person for having such a truly unbearable accent. Existence altogether would make for one miserable, drawn-out read. If I was McCutchen, I’d be on the first flight out after the season was over, every year..

[via Deadspin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

Image via Youtube, Imgur