"Sixty-two five, that's good money.''

What does $ mean to you? Same as a pro athlete?

I doubt she’s unhappy

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It’s Stick to (No) Sports Tuesday. Let’s talk money. Cold, hard whipout. A journalism professor I had in college said if you wanted to know the truth about absolutely anything, follow the dollar. Whenever anyone says, “It’s not about the money,’’ it’s all about the money.

After winning $18 million just last week, golfer Viktor Hovland offered, “I don’t need a lot to be happy. I don’t need a lot to live within my means.”

Define a lot. Tell us the parameters of your Means.

In 1988, Chris Sabo was a rookie with the Reds. Sabes had grown up in a highly blue-collar part of Detroit. He won the NL Rookie of the Year Award that season, and was seen locally as the epitome of a Love of the Game Guy. Sabes drove a brown Ford Escort with six-figure miles on it.

Sabo was making the rookie minimum salary of $62,500 that year. He said to me at the All Star Game, “Sixty-two five. That’s good money.’’ Chris Sabo might have been the only athlete who said something about money that I believed.

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Baseball’s biggest story in the two weeks since Shohei Ohtani blew out his pitching elbow is not what effect that injury might have on Ohtani’s Ruth-ian two-way legacy. It’s about what the injury will cost him, money-wise.

NFL running backs are leaking money. Josh Jacobs and Saquon Barkley held out for more money and years. Both signed 1-year deals, because their teams didn’t want to pay guaranteed bucks for players with short careers, even by NFL standards. Joe Mixon took less money than he wanted, presumably because Mixon and /or his agent saw the writing on the running back wall. It wasn’t in green ink.

It’s like the late Dodgers GM Branch Rickey said to slugger Ralph Kiner, who wanted more money: “We finished last with you, we can do that without you.”

Money isn’t happiness, but it can help you down that yellow brick road. Pro jocks see it as a scoreboard. For many of them, it’s not the money, strictly speaking. It’s what the money represents. Their egos need to know they’re making top dollars. They reason, “I’m as good as that guy, why’s he making more than me?’’

It’s a fair point.

So tell me, Mobsters. What’s it about for you?

I never resent the money an athlete makes, because (1) It’s there (2) If someone offered me mega-millions to write TML, I probably wouldn’t protest and (3) It’s there. If it’s between a player having the money and an owner having it, I’ll go with the player.

You’d think a guy calling himself Johnny Thinwallet might have a higher opinion of money than most. I don’t. Really. For me, money represents time and freedom. Nothing more. Money that buys time and freedom is money well spent, and money I want. I retired at 64 1/2 because I had sufficient funds to do so. The currency of time spent with my family, my friends and myself cannot be bought.

There’s nothing more priceless than going on a two-week vacation and metaphorically never looking at your watch. Freedom is saying “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do’’ and practicing it.

If I made Hovland money, would I live any differently? Would you?

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I write TML for free (for now) because I love to write. If I charge, it won’t be for the money. OK, it will. But it will also be because I believe my time is worth something. But money can’t keep me engaged, it can’t impact my empathy, it can’t keep away the rain when I want to play golf or guarantee me perfect sunsets at the beach.

I could use it to buy a house in Montreat, NC, but not to buy the memories that make the place otherworldly special.

I wouldn’t live any differently if I suddenly found myself atop Mt. Cashmore.

You?

Viktor Hovland’s not bunking in a one-room cabin in the Appalachian foothills. But he does live in Stillwater, OK, which offers a decent approximation. Hovland also spent an entire PGA Tour season driving from tournament to tournament. Even if the vehicle was a Lexus.

He doesn’t need cash to be cool with life, and that’s cool. And I hope he lives that way.

Now, then. . .

BROWNING OR SIEMIAN? A backup QB is unimportant until he’s not. NFL teams that lose their starting QBs generally start losing lots of games immediately. The Bengals were flying high in 2015, then Andy Dalton got hurt. AJ McCarron was a very good backup, but he wasn’t Dalton, who was a longshot MVP candidate when he went down with a month left in the season.

In Jan. 2006, Carson Palmer fell to Kimo VonAxeMurderer in the wild card game. You know what happened next. And Jon Kitna was a decent stand-in.

Later today, the Bengals will tell us if Jake Browning is their #2 QB, or if Trevor Siemian has earned their trust. Browning has hit his last 10 throws this August and led two TD drives. Siemian has been a little less brilliant, but has starting experience.

It’s shocking, given the all-importance of a good quarterback, how few good backups there are in the NFL. Teams like to brag about their depth at other positions — see how we rotate our defensive front 7 guys in and out? — but when QB1 goes down, the answer is a question mark.

Jake Browning is the favorite to be QB2. He’ll be the most important least important player on the team.

IS THERE A COMPELLING REASON to keep running Andrew Abbott out there? I’d suggested in This Space yesterday and maybe a month ago that Abbott would at the very least be living in pitch-count jail. From what we saw Monday night, he’s beyond that. Shut him down.

It would be in line with the Club’s Just Say No deadline philosophy. Next year won that discussion, so why would you risk a kid’s arm this year?

SI.com

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It wouldn’t mean the Reds are tossing in the towel, because Abbott has been pitching with the yellow light on for more than a few starts already. It’d mean they’re not going to risk a prime part of their future on a present they chose not to help.

Yeah?

THOSE DARNED KIDS. . . Rams QB Matt Stafford, who’s all of 35, can’t relate to his young teammates, according to his wife. Yahoo:

Stafford's wife Kelly said on her podcast, "The Morning After With Kelly Stafford," her husband is having a difficult time forming relationships with the new people.

"It’s kind of crazy. So Matthew’s been in the league a long time. He’s like, 'The difference in the locker room has changed so significantly.' They have a lot of rookies on their team, they’re very young," Kelly Stafford said. "But he’s like, 'I feel like I can’t connect. In the old days you’d come out of practice, you’d shower, and people would be playing cards, people would be interacting. Who knows what they're doing, but they're doing something together.

"But now they get out of practice, and meetings during training camp, and they go straight to their phones," Kelly Stafford said.

Yeah, like, ain’t that the, like, truth?

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Brooooce fans, what’s your favorite Springsteen album? I’ll bet it’s not Tunnel of Love. That’s mine. Full of Doc tunes, or at least tunes that appeal to Doc’s formidable melancholy.

(Don’t you hate those people who refer to themselves in that vague, third-person way when they’re pretending to be humble?)

One Step Up is wonderful, Walk Like a Man is better than that. Tougher Than the Rest. And this one is right up there.

I want all the time, all that heaven will allow.