Living in my house, I consistently hearing about sports. Baseball is frequently the topic. It seems as if it is a 24-hour a day, 365 days a year thing. Well that may be a small exaggeration, but it is a lot. We now have a no baseball at the table rule. They discuss about which teams may be signing what player. Who may be traded and to whom. Why a specific team cannot sign a specific player even if they are the best-suited player for the team. They talk about the money that these baseball players make. The television deals that the various teams signed. Team revenues and payrolls. The numbers are staggering. I decided I am going to learn about this. If have I to listen to it all the time, I might as well know what they are talking about.
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During that series between the heavily favored Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, gamblers were able to convince eight players on the White Sox to take money to “throw” the series. The players were promised $100,000 if the ensured that the White Sox lost the series. In today’s dollars, that was $1.2 million. Eddie Cicotte, a White Sox pitcher who implicated in the scandal, was promised a bonus of $10,000 by the owner, Charlie Comiskey, if he won 30 games throughout the season. When he got to 29 wins, Comiskey ordered Eddie Cicotte benched to prevent him from getting 30 victories. Many people feel that if the owners had paid the players their bonuses and a more commensurate wage comparative to how much money they were making, the players would not have been so susceptible to taking money from gamblers. These eight players were expelled from the league by the commissioner of baseball. To make it worse, the gamblers refused to pay those eight players their money for throwing the series. Baseball hasn’t been the same …show more content…
The players typically did not do well in standing together to fight against the owners. Most gave in and allowed the owners to bully them around out of fear that they would be out of a job. Today’s baseball player’s union, the Players Association, had been around since 1953. The players sought numerous benefits; higher salaries, say in who they played for, increased pension payouts, and many more. However, free agency was the Holy Grail for baseball players. Free agency was long overdue for the players. Free agency was what would ultimately level the playing field with the owners.
In 1920, the average player’s salary was $5000 per year. One of the all-time greats of baseball, Babe Ruth, had a salary of $80,000 in 1930. In today’s dollars, Babe Ruth would’ve only been making $1.436 million. He was the exception, not the rule. Over the next 20-year period, the average salary only went up $2000, even though inflation skyrocketed during this time. It’s not say Babe Ruth’s salary was historically low. Another one the all-time greats, Willie Mays, earned a salary of $165,000 in 1959. That works out to $1.275 in today’s