Wealth & Money Quote by Mickey Gilley

Mickey Gilley’s line lands like a shrug with a grin: quit clutching pearls about what entertainers spend, because America has been cheering on this movie forever. By dragging Babe Ruth into a conversation about money, he’s not making an economic argument so much as a cultural one. The point isn’t that spending is good; it’s that outrage is selective, and usually aimed at the people we still feel entitled to judge.

The “same with the ballplayers” move is a savvy piece of populist triangulation. Athletes are the one category of celebrity Americans routinely treat as both heroic and legitimate, even when the pay and the lifestyles get absurd. So Gilley borrows their social permission. If Ruth could be a folk saint while spending big, why is a musician supposed to perform humility on command?

There’s a quiet generational pivot in “make a lot more money now.” Gilley is clocking inflation, the ballooning scale of fame, and the way modern entertainment turned into high-stakes industry. It’s also a defense against the old moral math: working-class authenticity equals modest living. He came up in an era when country music sold itself as regular-people art; success was supposed to look accidental. This quote punctures that myth while keeping the tone neighborly.

Underneath it all is a negotiation about who gets to be wealthy without being resented: the national pastime as alibi, nostalgia as shield, and a reminder that capitalism doesn’t care whether the jersey says Yankees or the marquee says honky-tonk.