Ted Was a Salary Champ, Too
Generations of Bostonians yet unborn will argue whether Ted
Williams' 4-1/2 years in the military cost him a chance at
Babe Ruth's career home run record. The missed time may have
cost Ted another mark of The Babe's: the longest tenure as
Major League Baseball's highest-paid player.
Although salary figures from Williams' era are hard to find,
from the best available evidence no one outearned Ted during the
final twelve seasons of his career. In 1949 Williams and Joe
DiMaggio both received raises to $100,000, the de facto salary
cap for more than a decade. DiMaggio's retirement after the
1951 season left Ted alone at the top of the salary ladder.
Williams stayed there until his retirement after the 1960
season. Only Babe Ruth, who outearned everyone else from 1922
through 1934, ever held the Most Valued Player title for longer.
Williams' reign was helped by the early retirements of
high-salaried contemporaries such as Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg
and Ralph Kiner, and by his NL counterpart Stan Musial's
willingness to play for $80,000/year through most of the 1950s.
Musial didn't reach six figures until 1958, the year
Ted's salary rose to $125,000.
Ted took a substantial pay cut in 1960 -- but so did Stan, who
also had an off year in 1959. Their successors as the majors'
most glamorous sluggers, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle,
didn't reach the $100,000 mark until 1963.
These figures don't seem so impressive now that the 25th man
on a major league roster is guaranteed $200,000/year. The
sidebar, which converts Williams' reported annual salaries
into 2002 dollars, shows that during his career, Williams earned
the equivalent of about $10,800,000 in 2002 dollars. That sounds
better, but still inadequate for a man of Williams'
accomplishments.
To put Williams' salary into better perspective, through
most of the 1950s Williams received about one-fourth of the
entire Red Sox payroll. That's significantly more than Alex
Rodriguez' share of the 2002 Texas Rangers' payroll.
And teams had much less to spend in Ted Williams' era. From
1958 to 1960, the last three seasons of Williams' career, the
average Red Sox ticket cost just $1.76 and the team drew slightly
over a million fans per year. That meant gate receipts of about
$1.8 million/year, compared to $90 million in 2001. Local media
money rose from $500,000 in 1960 to $33 million in 2001, while
the Sox' share of MLB's national TV contract soared from
$200,000 to about $15 million.
One of the most telling numbers about Williams' era
isn't .406, or .344, or 521. It's 10,454 -- the number of
fans who rattled around Fenway Park during what everyone knew
would be Ted Williams' last home game. A meaningless
midseason game now draws three times as many fans than came to
see the last appearance of the greatest player in franchise
history.
Think about that the next time you hear someone proclaim that
"baseball is dying." Ted Williams may be mortal, but
the game he loved even more than fishing will survive even Bud
Selig.
Ted Williams' Salaries (Unofficial)
| Year |
Salary |
Inflation-Adjusted
Salary |
| 1939 |
$6,500 |
$84,000 |
| 1940 |
$12,000 |
$154,000 |
| 1941 |
$20,000 |
$244,000 |
| 1942 |
$35,000 |
$385,000 |
| 1943-45 |
Military service |
|
| 1946 |
$50,000 |
$460,000 |
| 1947 |
$75,000 |
$603,000 |
| 1948 |
$90,000 |
$670,000 |
| 1949 |
$100,000 |
$753,000 |
| 1950 |
$100,000 |
$744,000 |
| 1951 |
$100,000 |
$690,000 |
| 1952 |
$100,000 |
$677,000 |
| 1953 |
$100,000 |
$672,000 |
| 1954 |
$100,000 |
$667,000 |
| 1955 |
$100,000 |
$669,000 |
| 1956 |
$100,000 |
$659,000 |
| 1957 |
$100,000 |
$638,000 |
| 1958 |
$125,000 |
$776,000 |
| 1959 |
$125,000 |
$770,000 |
| 1960 |
$90,000 |
$545,000 |
Copyright © 2002 Doug Pappas. All rights
reserved.
Originally published in the July 2002 special Ted Williams
tribute issue of Boston Baseball.
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