At a wonderful wedding last night, I was asked about what I do and about what players do once they retire.  Obviously, for those of you that read this regularly you know that there is a wide range of answers there.  If they played for a long time, or at a very high level then, most-likely, they made serious money and don’t need to find steady employment, but if they only played a couple of years at the major-league level they didn’t get very far towards making enough money to last them the rest of their lives, and they will have to go to work- after all major league minimum might pay off a house, but it won’t pay for taxes on that house for the next 50 years.

Not sure this post is directly related to that, but I thought of our conversation as I read Susan Slusser’s piece this morning about Eric Chavez who has started his own bat company.  DiegoBats.us was started with a friend of Chavez and other major leaguers Jermaine Dye and Eric Munson.    The bats are MLB certified, which requires $10,000 in fees and $10 million in liability insurance - which is why the players are needed to finance it.  But several of Eric Chavez’s teammates are already using the bats.

While Chavez may not need to really start his own bat company, and while he claims it isn’t a real money-maker- one has to ask what start-up is- its interesting to see how one player goes about investing and planning his future.

Just an interesting piece for some Sunday reading.