Wills Signs for $75,000, Ends One L.A. Holdout

The spring of 1966 was Holdout City in Los Angeles.

First it was Dodger shortstop Maury Wills, who balked for weeks before signing 33 years ago today for $75,000.

That got Wills the attention, but his case was small potatoes compared to what pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale were trying to pull. Reports said they wanted a three-year deal paying them $500,000 each.

And every time Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi said no, the pitchers raised the ante, it seemed. Stay tuned. A coming Countdown will report the highlights and result of The Great Koufax/Drysdale Holdout of 1966.

Meanwhile, at least for a day, Wills seemed content to be baseball’s third-highest paid player. His $75,000 trailed only Willie Mays’ $125,000 and Mickey Mantle’s $100,000. And it represented a hefty raise over the $60,000 he made in 1965.

Wills had just completed a banjo-playing tour of Japan when he signed, and seemed eager to get started at the Dodgers’ Vero Beach camp.

“I may be 33, but I feel 21,” said Wills, who’d demanded $100,000.

“I may not be getting $100,000, but I think I have enough years left so that ultimately I will be making that kind of money. Sandy and Don are negotiating on their own--what they get is their business.”

Another holdout story was building in San Francisco, where Giant pitcher Juan Marichal, who’d won 68 games the previous three seasons--one more than Koufax, two more than Drysdale--was asking for $80,000.

Wills, who had set a one-season stolen base record of 104 in 1962, said he’d try to break it, after getting 94 in 1965.

But slowed by injury, he would get only 38 in 1966. After that, his high steal mark for the duration of his career (he retired in 1972) would be 52, in 1968.

Also on this date: In 1966, Abe Saperstein, who founded the Harlem Globetrotters in the 1920s and saw them play in 90 countries, died at 63. . . . In 1966, holdout Minnesota Twin pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant, who made $21,000 with a 21-7 season in 1965, signed for $36,000. . . . In 1970, slugger Frank Howard wondered if rising baseball wages were harmful to the game’s economic health. “Salaries are out of line. It won’t be too long before a player is getting $200,000,” Howard said. . . . In 1997, North Carolina’s Dean Smith became college basketball’s all-time coaching win leader with No. 877, one more than Adolph Rupp.