Yesterday, the St. Louis Cardinals announced, in a bit of non-news, that left handed starter Mark Mulder, a pending free agent, will be undergoing season-ending surgery on his throwing shoulder. It put me in mind of something.

Although it’s quieted down somewhat over time, there’s one complaint I’ve heard about the sport in my time as a baseball writer more than any other. It hasn’t had to do with steroids, public subsidies for ballparks, inequitable distribution of revenue, bad relievers, the disrespectful young hooligans who play the game, or even that after more than 40 years the Mets still represent the world’s most stylish city in colors capable of triggering psychedelic flashbacks. Instead, it’s that ballplayers are greedy.

The complaint will be all too familiar to you, as heard from anyone from a public school teacher to a hobo to a gout-stricken talk radio host — “I would play for free,” and so forth. This is usually the line taken by the casual fan or non-fan; the aficionado will usually have one of a variety of more sophisticated complaints involving players going for the absolute last dollar rather than going where they have the best chance to win or the like.

While everyone’s entitled to think that ballplayers ought to take less money than someone is willing to pay them — and while ballplayers are entitled to, and sometimes actually will, do so — there are any number of reasons why players, when they have the choice, usually go to the highest bidder. They’re athletes, not negotiators, for one thing. Contracts are almost invariably left entirely to agents, which constrains their options somewhat. Willing as Joe Shlabotnik may be to go to play for free beer and sanitary socks, it would be grossly unethical of his agent not to look around for a better deal. For another, ballplayers are union men, rightly feeling the responsibility they have to strike the best possible deal in the name of making it easier for others to make a lot of money, thus justifying the sacrifices others have made on their behalf.

Finally, you have security.Any deal a ballplayer strikes will most likely be his last chance to make a big score. Future opportunities may as well not exist; markets change, players get hurt, players get old. It even happens to stars.

Just look at this coming off-season’s pitching market. A few years ago, with Chicago’s Kerry Wood, Oakland’s Barry Zito, and St. Louis’ Mark Mulder primed to hit free agency this winter, it looked as if there would be a preposterous number of young aces available. As is, Wood has endured a number of shoulder surgeries, will probably never be able to start again and may never again be a quality major leaguer. Mulder has run up a 7.14 ERA and will hit the market coming off arthroscopic surgery to repair his rotator cuff; he, too, may be done as a reliable major leaguer, leave alone being a star. Only Zito will command ace money this winter; the other two will most likely get incentive-based deals that could be their last professional contracts.

This attrition rate is nothing unusual at all. The top draft pick demands as much money as possible because the odds are that he’ll never make the majors. The young star demands as much money as possible because there’s a good chance he’ll never make it to free agency. The free agent demands as much money as possible because there’s a good chance that his deal will be the last he’ll ever sign.

For many fans, the sums involved are so large that all differences between them recede, and they become simply fanciful, like the money in Scrooge Mc-Duck’s money vault. The basic complaint is that players are set for life anyway, so another million dollars or two can’t make a big difference.This is true in a limited sense, but driving for that extra million dollars is how you get the best deal — announcing that you’re going to the highest bidder and doing so. That’s why agents like Scott Boras with a reputation for steering their client to the team willing to pay the most are so successful — because they get the best deals. And the differences in those deals, that easily criticized extra million dollars or so, are real.

Kerry Wood has made about $40 million in his career; Mark Mulder about $20 million; Barry Zito about $18 million. Zito’s next contract will most likely pay him more than the three of them have made, put together, in their careers. Those are the stakes ballplayers are playing for; that’s the difference between hurting your shoulder and keeping it healthy. In such a context, knowing that throwing one pitch the wrong way could mean the difference between $20 and $100 million, of course you go for the extra money. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.

Barry Zito will, I would guess, probably end up in New York this off-season, and then the familiar ritual will begin — fans of one or another slighted team will mock him. Zito will say the bland, but right, things you say in such a circumstance, about culture and a chance to win and great fans, and people will mock him and say it’s all about the money, as if it were a revelation. All of which makes infinitely less sense than Zito doing the right thing, his reward for having been lucky enough to not be like his old teammate Mulder.