Baseball Salaries
It is a common refrain today that baseball salaries at the highest level of play are out of control. Indeed, this applies not only to baseball, but many entertainment industries, including other professional sports, top musical artists, and Hollywood actors. However, not all baseball players can expect to earn mega-millions; it is only a fraction of all players that do. Read on to find out the truth about salaries in baseball.
Baseball salaries have not always been what they are now. While today, the highest paid player in baseball, Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, and the highest paid pitcher in baseball, Johan Santana of the New York Mets, each earn over $20 million annually, there was a time when even the greatest stars of baseball worked off-season jobs just to pay the bills! When did things change? It happened in the 1970’s, and the men responsible were Curt Flood and Marvin Miller.
The story of baseball contracts before 1970 involved a bit of legalese known as the reserve clause. This clause, included in every professional baseball contract, tied a player to his team in perpetuity unless traded. Under the reserve clause, when a player’s contract expired, his old team retained exclusive rights to bid for his services. This forced players to take whatever their owner would offer them.
In a letter to then-commissioner of Major League Baseball Bowie Kuhn on December 24, 1969, star outfielder Curt Flood demanded that he be declared a free agent. Having been traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies that October, Flood refused to report to the Phillies; he felt that the reserve clause unfairly stripped players of their rights and wished to sell his services to the open market. On January 16, 1970, Flood filed a $ 1 million lawsuit against Kuhn and Major League Baseball under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in favor of Major League Baseball. After 13 games with the Washington Senators in 1971, Flood retired from baseball.
The story does not end here, however. It picks up with Marvin Miller, at the time head of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). In 1974, Miller won an arbitration hearing against Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley, in which star pitcher Catfish Hunter was declared a free agent due to Finley’s failure to pay Hunter an annuity payment required by his contract. Subsequently, Hunter would sign a contract with the New York Yankees worth $3.5 million over five years. Later in 1974, Miller encouraged Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally to sit out the year without signing a contract. At the end of the year, the two players filed grievance arbitration. The resulting Seitz decision ruled that both players had fulfilled their contractual obligations and had no further ties to their former ballclubs, making them free agents. This effectively ended the age of the reserve clause and ushered in the age of free agency.
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