Scott Boras on Arts & Education

Clearly Three Percent is not a sports blog (we leave that to the always informed and entertaining Deadspin), but I was reading the New Yorker article on super-agent Scott Boras and am very troubled by this quote:

“I see grand houses of symphonies and performing-arts centers and such, which is great for a community to have, but on the other hand I walk four blocks away and I see a run-down school and I’m wondering, Where are our priorities?”

This isn’t to say that schools and education aren’t in need of more funding, and maybe I’m a bit sensitive, inclined to hate on Boras, and misreading this, but really, to pit arts against education seems a bit misguided. Couldn’t he have chosen the War in Iraq or a million other things people/governments waste money on? Why arts?

Just to put things in perspective, I looked up some of Boras’s clients and found that the 2007 salary for three of his clients (Alex Rodriguez $27.7 million, Barry Zito $10 million, and Carlos Beltran $13.6 million) exceeded the total amount of money awarded by the New York State Council on the Arts (the largest state arts council in the country) in the past fiscal year by almost $14 million. (NYSCA gave out $37.4 million to 1304 organizations.)

I love baseball (and sports in general) as much as the next guy, but that seems insane. Priorities. Whatever.