Salaries Today for the Ruthless

We bring you today an exclusive--a feature you will not read in any other publication--an interview with George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

Our intrepid journalist tracked him down in a sun-strewn glen in the hereafter, where the Babe is calmly wolfing down a jar of his favorite pickled eels and practicing his chip shots.

Reporter: Babe! It’s good to see you in this idyllic spot, not to say, er, ah, well, surprised. I mean, you know, given your past and all. I mean, we weren’t sure you’d make it here to Paradise.

Babe: Oh, yeah, I get you. Well, you see, the trial was held in Los Angeles. St. Peter never had a chance against those slickers of mine. What’s on your mind, keed?

Reporter: Well, Babe, it’s about the salaries. Kind of boggles the mind today. What was your top salary, Babe?

Babe: Ah, 1932, 80 grand! They’ll never make that kind of money again in any sport!

Reporter: Er, ah, Babe, that’s what I’m here about. They make more than that all over sports today. And 80 grand is what they call “chump change” today.

Babe: You’re kidding me! Hey, 23 skiddoo, kiddo! I wasn’t born yesterday. I didn’t even die yesterday. Listen, when I got that money, somebody said I made more than the president. I said, “Well, I had a better year than he did.” I did too. Hit .373 with 46 home runs and 163 runs batted in. Match that around New York!

Reporter: Babe, I hate to tell you this, but the average big league salary today is over a million a player--around a million-two, I think.

Babe: A million! You gotta be kidding! Thomas Edison didn’t get a million a year. And he invented the electric light. And the moving pictures!

Reporter: Well, that’s the problem. What he invented has become television. Pays out a lot of money today, Babe. They need entertainment and it’s either truck racing in mud or sports. That’s what put the average up to a million a year.

Babe (groaning): A million-a-year average! Why, the 1927 Yankees’ whole team didn’t get a million. And we won the pennant by 19 games and the World Series in four straight. I hit 60 home runs and that was about one-seventh of all the home runs hit in the league and I got--what?--that year? $40,000? Something like that.

Reporter: Babe, they gave a journeyman infielder by the name of Jay Bell a $34-million, five-year contract.

Babe (whistling): Phew! What’d he do--bat .400? Hit 61 homers?

Reporter: Babe, his lifetime average was .265 in the National League. He hit .290 last year at Kansas City.

Babe: Two-ninety! Colonel Ruppert would have cut me to $30,000 if I only batted .290.

Reporter: That’s nothing. Your old club, the Yankees, just paid millions for a designated hitter.

Babe (suspiciously): A what?

Reporter: Designated hitter. A guy who goes up there just to hit for the pitcher every night.

Babe (outraged): You mean to tell me there’s a guy, all he has to do is go up to bat four times a game? He doesn’t have to catch line drives, throw out runners, run into fences chasing fly balls? He never gets an error? And he gets millions? Why, I could have played till I was 60 if all I had to do was bat!

Reporter: It’s not only baseball, Babe, it’s all sports. Take football. They got a guy, all he does is kick field goals. For millions. Never gets his uniform dirty.

Babe (suspiciously): You mean Notre Dame and Yale and all those fellows pay money to the players? Used to be they just sneaked them used cars and raccoon coats.

Reporter: No, Babe. Football is largely pro these days.

Babe: You mean, like the Giants with Tuffy Leemans and Tilly Manton and them guys? Won’t sell. You need card tricks and cheerleaders and dear old alma mammy for that game.

Reporter (regretfully): No, Babe, it’s our old friend, television. Nobody televises Yale-Harvard anymore. It’s Green Bay-Tampa Bay.

Babe: What’s Green Bay? And by television, you mean that funny little round picture with the snow in it they have over at the Dumont lab?

Reporter: No, Babe, it comes 50 feet high and in color nowadays. The networks paid out $4.4 billion for TV rights to pro football in the last contract. They may have to double it this time around.

Babe: Did you say billion? There isn’t that much money in the whole world, is there?

Reporter: Babe, they pay $2.6 billion for the NBA.

Babe: The NBA? That’s prizefighting, right? Well, now I get you. Tunney got $975,000 for beating Dempsey, eh?

Reporter: No, Babe, fighters get 30 mil for one fight nowadays. The NBA is the National Basketball Assn., pro basketball.

Babe: Basketball? You mean that funny little game where they bounce a ball on a hardwood floor and flip it through a peach basket? Who’d go to see that?

Reporter: Babe, it’s big. They pay one guy 30 mil a year, plus all the endorsements he can handle. He’s richer than some countries.

Babe: I think I’m getting a headache. In my day, a guy like that would have gone into baseball.

Reporter: He tried it, Babe. Couldn’t handle the curveball.

Babe: Isn’t baseball our national pastime anymore?

Reporter: Oh, yeah, Babe. I mean, the last great American player was Henry Aaron. Before that we had Willie Mays. Americans Ken Griffey and Mark McGwire show some promise, but our best players come from the Caribbean these days.

The Red Sox just signed a pitcher from the Dominican, Pedro Martinez, for $75 million or $90 million, depending on how you read the contract.

Babe (whistling): Wow! What’d he do--pitch a lotta no-hitters? Win 40 games like Big Ed Walsh?

Reporter: No. He won 17 games last year. That’s the most he ever won.

Babe: Just 17? Hey, I won 24 games in 1917! I won 23 in 1916! I hit 29 home runs as a pitcher in 1919.

Reporter: Well, he had an ERA of 1.90.

Babe: Hey! I had 1.75 in 1916. And I got $3,500 for the whole year!

Reporter: What can I tell you, Babe?

Babe: Well, for one thing, I’m beginning to wonder if this is heaven. I’m beginning to think I been tricked. Heaven would be to be on the Yankees as a designated hitter or a seven-inning pitcher with a shoe contract. How much you think I’d get?

Reporter: Well, Babe, the general bidding would start with Fifth Avenue, and maybe they’d throw in an island--Rhode Island. Meanwhile, why don’t you just go find Edison and Marconi and commiserate?