Baseball’s money game continued Monday with two major free-agent signings: first baseman Will Clark to the Texas Rangers for what is becoming the standard $30 million for five years; and pitcher Sid Fernandez to the Baltimore Orioles, $9 million for three years.
The signings are further evidence player salaries will continue to escalate. Clark is coming off his worst power season, only 14 home runs and 73 runs batted in, but will earn $6 million a year through 1998, an approximate 25 percent increase from his previous wage.
Fernandez, often injured and on the disabled list during two of the last three seasons, jumped from $2.1 million a year to $3 million. Considering he had a losing record last year-5 wins against 6 losses-he and his agent should be congratulated.
The Orioles also were in pursuit of Clark. The Baltimore brass entertained Clark and Jeff Moorad, his agent, last weekend. It can be assumed the Orioles also offered big money, probably $25 million for five years. Baltimore insiders expected Clark would accept unless he got a higher offer from the Rangers, who were the next stop.
That the Orioles, supposedly a small-market club, have been a major player in the free-agent hunt is not surprising. The Players Association is using the Birds as Exhibit A in its quadrennial struggle with management for higher wages and ancillary benefits.
It’s hard to know who to root for. The average 1993 player salary, including incentive bonuses paid by the clubs, was $1,064,149, certainly a hefty wage. The average pay on two teams, the Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays, was closer to $2 million; $1.731 million for the Yankees, $1.726 million for the Jays.
These numbers do not include an additional $100,000, each players’ share of the monies earned by the union’s merchandising operation. The merchandising program, alone, is a good barometer of the union’s enormous success.
When Marvin Miller and Dick Moss came to the players’ rescue in 1966, there was no such benefit. Three years later, when it exceeded the $344 annual dues, Miller and Moss were concerned because the players, instead of losing money through membership fee, had begun to profit by their union association.
Earlier this year, the association moved into a new palatial office, Tom Roberts, a long-time arbitrator, when visiting their new digs for the first time, told a union attorney, “Wait until Marvin sees this!” Miller and Moss, who had pioneered the salary revolution, had worked out of a comparative cubbyhole.
Obviously, it has become a fat-cat union, but the owners haven’t been on bread and water. The Orioles, for example, sold for $173 million at a public auction last August, $103 million more than the price paid by the previous owner four earlier.
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News item: The Atlanta Braves have raised their overall ticket prices enough to possibly produce $8.5 million in additional ticket revenues to balance an anticipated $7 million reduction from network television. Their top ticket is now $20, an increase of $10.50 for those seats since 1991. In 1993, the Braves sold out 37 games, and out of the 3.925 million tickets available for the 81 home games, fans snapped up all about 45,000.
And so the baseball industry is not unlike all the others. In the end, the consumer pays. A 10-15 percent hike in big-league ticket prices is estimated. Last season, the increase was a modest 1.7 percent, the year before 7.7 percent.
Said Frank Maloney, ticket manager of the Cubs, who have upped the ante approximately 10 percent: “Either the prices are going to go up or the player salaries will have to come down.”
“I can remember when kids used to get in for a half a buck,” said Jack Kuenster, the venerable editor of the Baseball Digest. Kuenster paused, longing for the days of his youth, when Luke Appling, Zeke Bonura and Ted Lyons were among his White Sox heroes.
It is Kuenster’s opinion, mine also, that the baseball ticket prices no longer are within the reach of the common man. The proliferation of skyboxes are the best example of the changing times. They have become a major source of club income but, in the main, have had an undesirable affect.
In years gone by, the romantic assumption, seldom true, was that the tailor and the corporation president sat side by side, ballpark buddies, drinking their brew and digging into a communal peanut bag. Now the tailor is flanked by the ironworker while the dynamo from big business is up yonder in a cushioned chair cutting a deal with a fellow mogul.
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Bud Selig, president of the Milwaukee Brewers who for the last 14 months has been doubling as the interim commissioner, insists a baseball crowd, with minor exceptions, represents the highest form of democracy.
Selig went on to explain the Brewers have adjusted ticket prices on only six percent of their stadium capacity. The only fans saddled with an increase, he said, will be those in the choice box seats who, beginning with the new season, will be attended by uniformed waiters and waitresses.