Talking Points: How can Cabrera spend his money?

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Miguel Cabrera scored the richest contract in U.S. sports history, reaching a $292 million deal over 10 years with the Tigers.

Some things Cabrera’s contract can buy:

He can buy 6.95 billion — yes, billion with a ‘B’ — gallons of gas in his homeland of Venezuela. It’s cheap there, selling for under five cents per gallon. Now, if he paid for a pipeline to Detroit, maybe Cabrera could provide for the whole state — Michigan motorists used 4.4 billion gallons in 2012, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Cabrera will make $43,195 each time he steps to home plate, based on his totals for the Tigers. The average U.S. yearly wage was $42,498 in 2012, the Social Security Administration said. Cabrera will get about $11,600 for each pitch he sees, the stats show.

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It’s hard to think of Chicago’s Wrigley Field as anything but a place of heartbreak — a place where Cubs fans wait, season after season, for an elusive World Series title that never comes.

Yet in the century without a championship, the ballpark has been in first time and time again in changing the way America watches baseball.

It was the first to let fans keep foul balls. The first with permanent concession stands. The first with organ music.

The first to clean the park and broadcast games as part of an effort to diversify the fan base and attract women and their kids to a game traditionally more popular among men.

“We think of all this as so obvious, but back then this was considered revolutionary,” said Cubs historian Ed Hartig.

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