Baseball Salaries 130 Years Ago
How the Pay Checks of the 1880s Compared with a Big League’s Income Today
Presented below, a story by William H. Dunbar that ran in Baseball Magazine in July 1918.
The vexed question in baseball is always the salary problem. Twenty odd athletes to a club, each with a clear idea of what he is worth to his skeptical employer, create more dissension than all other baseball tangles combined. The stars of the diamond now receive a much larger income than used to be the case, but even in the ‘80s, according to the records, the salary problem had begun to loom large on the horizon.
The most interesting item in a big leaguer’s personal affairs, at least from the layman’s viewpoint, is his salary. Probably more speculation is current among fandom’s laity concerning the pay envelope of a famous diamond star, than any other theme in baseball. We all know how Grover Cleveland Alexander relinquished a job paying $12,500 per annum for his thirty per in the army. But in fairness to big Aleck we must rate his salary this year at $17,500, for he received a cash bonus of $5,000 for fixing his signature to one of the briefest contracts on record.
Other famous big leaguers have cut juicy melons in the form of financial reward. Eddie Collins is reputed to draw down the tidy sum of $15,000 per year for his dazzling work with the World’s Champions. Tris Speaker, as the chief luminary of the Forest City Club must get at least as much. Walter Johnson is supposed to be growing richer at the rate of $16,000 per annum for winning the majority of games that Washington is able to jimmy from opposing pitchers. And the only Tyrus, so rumor claims, counts his annual pay check in a row of ciphers with a big 2 in front of them.
Salaries soared to dizzy heights in the Federal League war. And just now they are undergoing the inevitable reaction, accelerated no doubt, by the wisdom of war retrenchment. But the history of big league salaries has usually been one of ever recurring boom days followed by a corresponding slump.
The old-timers tell us that no such salaries blossomed in the good old days of Pop Anson and Mike Kelly. Very true. We can all remember when Ty Cobb held out for an advance and received $12,500, up to that time the largest salary ever paid a ball-player. But when curiosity prompts the investigator to pry into the salary secrets of bygone days he will find that the old-time heroes whose names are memories now, really received a very substantial stipend, all the more impressive when it is considered that the purchasing power of the dollar was considerably more in the 80’s than in these days of war price inflation. [Via the Consumer Price Index, we can adjust Fred Dunlap’s $7,000 in 1888, tops for the era, to yield $203,802.42 … about a third of today’s rookie minimum salary. — jt]
A page torn from baseball history when the game was young reveals some curious information on this interesting question. Omitting the formative years up to 1880, when the game was slowly gaining its first grip on the popular interest and pausing at the threshold of the early nineties with the brotherhood war in the offing we will find that many old-timers really received pretty comfortable salaries during years when interest was merely normal. But even more interesting it is to trace the steady rise in salaries from 1881 to the close of 1890 and the days of the famous brotherhood war with its period of temporary salary inflation.
In 1881 Mike Kelly, the Ty Cobb of his day, was drawing down the sum of $1,300 a year. Evidently either the club or Kelly thought possible danger lurked in the number 13 for the next year his salary received a raise to $1,400. The following season it rose again, to $1,700. In 1884, it was an even $2,000. In 1885 it was $2,250. The following season it stood at $3,500. But in 1887 it rose to $4,000, where it remained for the three seasons ensuing.
Now $4,000 is not a whale of a salary in these days. But the fact remains that there are very many major leaguers now in uniform who never received $4,000 and in all probability never will. Of course, they were not in King Kelly’s class. But nevertheless considering the times, Kelly really drew a very satisfactory pay check.
Buck Ewing, considered by most old timers as the greatest catcher who ever lived, was drawing down the sum of $1,000 in 1881. But in 1883 his salary had soared to $3,100. In 1886 it was $3,500. In 1888 it was $4,500 while in 1889 it was a round $5,000.
There is no possible doubt that Ewing was worth it. Had he lived in these days his salary would have been considerably above $5,000, no doubt. And yet even now $5,000 would be considered a very good salary by most ball players.
Fred Pfeffer was getting $750 in 1881. Five years later his salary had risen to $1,800. In 1889 it was $3,000. Ed Hanlon drew down $1,200 in 1881. He was raised at least every other year and in 1889 was getting $3,100. Dan Brouthers’ slugging netted him $875 in 1881. The following season he drew $1,200, the next $1,600, the next $2,000, the next $2,500, the next $4,000. Pretty steady rise for Brouthers. And in 1889 he was getting the snug sum of $4,700.
“Old Hoss” Radbourne of pitching fame drew $2,000 in 1883, $3,000 in 1884, and $4,000 in 1885. He bit off raises in much bigger chunks than most of them but passed his zenith in 1887 when he was paid $4,500. The next season he received $4,250 and the next a flat $4,000. Fred Dunlap is credited with the largest amount received in any one year by a ball player in the early days. This amount was $7,000 and Dunlap drew that tidy sum in 1888. It is only fair, however, to admit that his salary called for $5,000 while $2,000 additional was paid him on his transferral from Detroit to Pittsburgh
.Among other interesting information the data at hand informs us that Connie Mack drew $2,250 as a player in 1886 and was getting $2,750 in 1889. Perhaps in these days of business uncertainty and huge investments Connie sometimes sighs for the time when he was a simple ball-player instead of a magnate and drew his pay check regularly, free from the risks and worries of big business.
Baseball has grown wonderfully since 1889. A single franchise now costs more than an entire circuit thirty years ago. An old-time ball park with its moderate real estate investment and wooden stands would represent but a fraction of the cost of a modern huge baseball plant with its steel and concrete stands. Naturally the players’ salaries have increased over early standards. But the records show that the stars of the ’80s, many of them, really drew pretty good pay for fielding without gloves and batting .400 in the old days.
