Ohtani’s mega-contract is worth smiling about
In 1937, Joe DiMaggio blasted 46 home runs for the World Champion Yankees. He batted .346 and drove in 167 runs. In a very close vote he was runner-up to Charlie Gehringer of the Tigers for Most Valuable Player of the American League.
DiMaggio was only 22 years old, but he felt he had clearly established himself as one of baseball’s elite players. He thought his 1938 salary should reflect that fact and demanded a $40,000 contract.
Col. Jacob Ruppert, co-owner of the team, thought otherwise. He said DiMaggio’s pay would be $25,000 and the young ballplayer should consider that a very generous offer. He pointed out that no one on the team — not even Lou Gehrig — was making $40,000.
DiMaggio retorted that Gehrig was grossly underpaid and he intended to take nothing less than $40,000. Ruppert said he wouldn’t add even a penny to his offer. Neither man was willing to budge.
When spring training began in March, DiMaggio was officially listed as a holdout. Since he was unsigned, he wasn’t allowed to participate in the spring drills or the exhibition games. He was still holding out when the season opened on April 18. A 30-year-old journeyman named Myril Hoag was the Yankees centerfielder as they lost their first game. Hoag played both games the next day as the Yanks split a doubleheader.
DiMaggio got the message. He approached Ruppert and told him that — um — $25,000 would suffice. Ruppert replied that the number was now $23,000 since DiMaggio was being fined $2,000 for skipping spring training. DiMaggio signed regardless. He knew he had no other choice.
In 1955, Richie Ashburn batted .338 and became only the second Phillies player in 22 years to win a National League batting title. He also walked 105 times and posted an on-base percentage of .449. When his proposed 1956 contract arrived in the mail the following January, Ashburn tore open the envelope, expecting to see a handsome raise.
He was shocked when he discovered that the Phillies were proposing to cut his salary. He immediately grabbed his telephone and asked for a long-distance operator.
In 1956 long distance calls were complicated, expensive and rare, but none of that concerned Ashburn. He was determined to confront owner Robert Carpenter and demand qn explanation.
“You did get a lot of hits,” Carpenter admitted, “but most of them didn’t go very far.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” barked Ashburn, “that if they had gone farther the outfielders would have caught them and they wouldn’t have been hits?”
Carpenter finally agreed that Ashburn was entitled to a raise and grudgingly gave him $4,500 more than he had made the previous season.
Those are just two examples of the manner in which baseball operated for decades. There was no free agency, no arbitration, no multi-year contracts and no agents. Players were at the mercy of their respective clubs and had to take whatever salary the clubs offered. The clubs knew how to be stingy. Most players had to take other jobs during the offseason.
Owners referred to players as their property. They frequently made deals amongst themselves, swapping players from one city to another. The players never had a voice in the transaction.
The commissioner, the league president, the team owner and the field manager all had the right to fine a player any amount of money for any reason. There was no appeal process. The player had no recourse but to pay the fine.
No other business in America operated that way. No other business would have been allowed to engage in many of the things that were routinely practiced in baseball. The owners insisted they could not function without these privileges but none of them was ever willing to open his books and prove it.
Not one.
The players formed a very weak union and tried to bargain for modifications in the system. They got nowhere.
In the mid-1960s, Jim Bunning, a future United States senator, floated a proposal that every eight-year veteran be permitted, once in his career, to declare himself a free agent and negotiate freely with all of the clubs. The owners rejected the suggestion as preposterous.
In exasperation Bunning asked the owners if they would agree to make every player a free agent when he reaches the age of 60. He meant it as a joke, but at least one owner on the negotiating committee didn’t take it that way.
“He told me,” Bunning said, “that if they grant that we’d someday be asking that it be lowered to 55.”
Eventually the players hired an experienced labor lawyer who knew how to secure meaningful reforms. Owners were forced to bid for talent and pay competitive salaries — salaries they had maintained for years they couldn’t afford to pay. Somehow, they found the means to pay them. Somehow the game continued to thrive.
This past winter a single player named Shohei Ohtani signed a 10-year deal worth half a billion dollars.
Is that excessive?
Of course it is.
Is anyone worthy of that kind of money? I don’t think so. Nevertheless, I’m grinning from ear to ear. My reaction is: Good for him.
I’m only sorry that DiMaggio, Ashburn and Bunning didn’t live to see it.
In a way I’m also sorry that Ruppert and Carpenter didn’t live to see it either. Perhaps they would have felt a twinge of shame.
Ah, who am I kidding? Of course they wouldn’t.
If you want to watch the first pitch of the 2024 season, you’re going to have to get up early next Wednesday. That’s when the Dodgers and Padres will play the first official game and it will be in Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea. The game is scheduled to begin at 7:05 p.m. in Seoul but that will be 6:05 a.m. here.
Gocheok Sky Dome is a cozy park that seats only 16,744 customers. It has one unique feature: The bullpens are below the dugouts.
The stadium opened in 2015 and its dimensions (325 feet down each foul line and 400 feet to dead centerfield) are reasonable. However, in order to achieve those dimensions, the builders were left with no room for bullpens. They solved that by adding a basement.
Thus, pitchers must walk down a flight of stairs in order to warm up.