“Money makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around. Money makes the world go around — of that we can be sure.”

— Lyrics from the hit musical Cabaret

“Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works.”

— Gordon Gekko, in the film Wall Street

On the one hand, here in Sports World, we have the New York Yankees committing more than $420 million to sign three free agents while selling season-ticket packages for box seats near home plate in their new stadium at prices ranging from $500 to $2,500 per game.

That’s right — per game.

On the other hand, we have the Arizona Cardinals and Minnesota Vikings struggling to sell out playoff games.

Which is more indicative of the ways things are in the Real World, where the stock market has been plummeting, jobs are being lost, debts are mounting and houses are being foreclosed upon.

In the Real World, banks are being propped up by taxpayer-provided infusions of capital. Yet Citibank, whose stock plummeted 90 percent in 2008, is shelling out $20 million a year to display its name on the Mets’ new ballpark.

Meanwhile, fans are running for the financial lifeboats because their ship isn’t coming in — it’s sinking.

But in Sports World, the Yankees are spending money like drunken sailors — six of their players (starting pitcher C.C. Sabathia, reliever Matt Rivera, catcher Jose Posada, first baseman Mark Teixeira, shortstop Derek Jeter, and third baseman Alex Rodriguez) will be the highest-paid at their respective positions in the history of baseball — as they prepare to play in their $1.3-billion, taxpayer-financed ballpark.

“We do what we think is appropriate,” Yankees chief operating officer Leon Trott said of the team’s excessive ticket prices. “In order to have 47,000 affordable seats, we had to have 4,500 expensive seats.”

What’s “affordable” to Trott isn’t necessarily what’s affordable to the average sports fan.

The remaining field-level seats offered in season ticket packages cost from $75 to $325 a game, and all games at the new Yankee Stadium will be priced the same. That’s not the case at the new Shea — oops, I mean, Citi Field — where ticket prices will vary according to the opponent, the month and the day of the week. Still, the average cost of the best seats at Citi Field is $495.

The Red Sox proudly announced that they wouldn’t be raising ticket prices in 2009. Of course, the Sox also had the highest average ticket price in baseball last year — $48.40.

The question this year, in Phoenix and Minneapolis, in New York and Boston — wherever professional sports are played across America — is whether financially strapped fans will continue to pay top dollar for tickets.

In recession-ridden New England, the answer probably is: “Yes.”

Surely, if the Patriots had qualified for the playoffs, there would have been no question that Gillette Stadium would have been sold out this weekend, as it has been for every game since it opened in 2002. Fenway Park has been sold out every game since mid-May, 2003. And, with the Celtics and Bruins both riding high, ticket sales promise to remain a hot item this chilly winter at the new Garden.

But “Playoff Fever” wasn’t exactly at epidemic proportions in the NFL this weekend.

The Cardinals — who hadn’t hosted a postseason game since moving to Arizona in 1988 — needed a 48-hour extension in order to sell out their new, domed stadium in Glendale (site of last season’s Super Bowl) and avoid a local television blackout yesterday. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the Vikings on Friday still had approximately 8,000 tickets remaining for their playoff game this afternoon against the Eagles and just managed to sell them all by yesterday afternoon’s deadline, which twice was extended 24 hours by an anxious league office.

Only 55 percent of Vikings’ season-ticket holders purchased playoff tickets, which made it difficult for the club to sell out.

Eight times over the last two seasons, local corporations had stepped up and purchased tickets to prevent a blackout in Minnesota. But not this time, according to Steve Lacroix, the team’s vice-president for sales and marketing.

“They’re in the same boat as everybody else,” he told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “It’s the start of a new quarter and a very touchy economic and financial environment. So, really, there is no one (corporation) that is going to come in and save the day.”

In the end, it was individual fans who purchased the tickets.

“The league was very accommodating,” said Lacroix, “giving us extra time. I definitely want to give the ultimate credit to our fans for making this happen.”

But will that continue to happen if the nation’s financial crisis drags on?

Dr. Rick Aberman, a prominent sports psychotherapist and Twin Cites native, doesn’t think it’s wise for pro teams to spend — and charge — as they have in the past.

“Teams — and fans — have defined themselves by how they price themselves,” Aberman said. “But they haven’t considered the moral component of that. It’s not a morally intelligent thing to do at a time when Congress is calling out the car company executives for flying private planes. It doesn’t look good for companies that are laying people off to be purchasing luxury boxes.”

jdonalds@projo.com