Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 53

7E Revenues the reason for soaring salaries II COURIER-POST, Sunday, May 12, 1991 combined $100 million on baseball Baseball last year, and each team's shareJ could be dramatically altered in -j ByVARTAN KUPELIAN Gannett News Service The economist in Robert Baade tells him one thing, the former ath- Said Stephen Greenberg, Majority jiaoitA Pofiohall'o rlonntv MmmiL' 1 sioner. "There's nobody in theIj business meaning the televi- I sionsports business who tell you that on today's facts in-1 1994 TV dollars will be as great, let! alone greater, than they are now." But Berry said the I V7 money will continue to increase-and he expects salaries to continue rising. "I'm not as quick to believe-national TV revenues are likely to' go down in the next contract," he said. "That's the eame thing the owners said five years ago before the end of the previous TV contract." "Today, you have to look at pro fessional athletes not in a vacuum but rather as part of the entertainment industry," said Rick Brode, a Detroit attorney who represents athletes and television radio personalities. "Nobody talks about a guy like Sylvester Stallone making $20 million on one film.

But because of the availability of baseball salary figures today, people are aware of them." Baade agreed. Two of the best New York Yankees great erpart Ted Williams embrace at home plate Joe DiMaggio (left) and Boston Red Sox count- before yesterday's Red Sox old timers game. An emotional reunion for DiMaggio, Williams "We're talking here about a cul- tural phenomenon," he said. "We're talking about the impor- tance of sport in this country. You really have to take a look at what it 1 is about our culture that allows us to support sport as we do The reality is that sport is a significant part of American culture.

You can I trace it back to fundamental American institutions." Bradley hits 8th homer to share league lead i TOKYO (AP) Former major I leaguer Phil Bradley hit his eighth home run of the season as the Yomiuri Giants beat the Hanshin Tigers 7-3 yesterday. Bradley shares the Central League home run lead with teammmate Tatsun- ori Hara. them came close to the kind of season Ruth had in 1927 when he hit .356, belted 60 homers and drove in 164 runs. The eame is true among pitchers, with another former New York Yankees star, left-hander Whitey Ford, as the historical example. Roger Clemens, the Boston Red Sox' ace right-hander, will become the game's highest-paid player at $5,380,250 a year when his four-year contract extension goes into effect Ford's $40,000 salary in 1962, the year after he posted a 25-4 record with a 3.21 ERA, would amount to about $176,000 in today's money less than one-thirtieth of Clemens' pay.

Why? "When you put it all together, not only is there an explosion of salaries but also an explosion of revenue by the owners," said Chuck Berry, an attorneyagent with Cleveland-based IMG Baseball. Easily the biggest chunk of the revenue pie is provided by televi-, sion. Each major league team gets about $10 million annually from the four-year, $1.06 billion network television contract with CBS, nearly $4 million more from ESPN cable, plus additional income from local cable outlets. "Players are paid what they are today because owners have a much larger source of revenue," Baade said. "What you need to do is find out what teams generate in revenues today compared to Babe Ruth's era.

Players are receiving salaries commensurate to what owners have in revenues." Perhaps a reflection of long-ago revenues can be found in the fact that the entire New York Yankees team was sold in 1945 for $2,875,000, less than the $3 million being paid today to each of 44 major leaguers. The Detroit Tigers' revenues, according to President Bo Schem-bechler, will be $44.44 million this season, with expenditures of $45 million expected. "We call that breaking even," he said. Most other major league clubs are in that same range. The TV contract with CBS and ESPN expires after the 1993 season.

The two networks lost a ii I'll "iwii I him He is dismayed by soaring major league baseball pay and admits to having much less tolerance for mediocre performances than ever before. He calls the $3 million annual baseball salaries, now almost commonplace, an assault on his senses. "As an athlete and economist, I feel fortunate that I can look at it from both perspectives," said Baade, 40, who played college basketball at Wisconsin-Whitewater, later coached at Lake Forest in suburban Chicago and now is an economics professor at Lake Forest. "I'm uncomfortable at some of the things I see in profess onal sports, but I'm not surprised." He said the enormous salaries ballplayers receive now are a function of revenues. If the revenues weren't there, the salaries wouldn't be, either.

That's the system. But just about all other expenses associated with major league baseball have held the line once the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is factored in. For instance, a comparison of actual ticket prices in Detroit in 1958 with today's equivalent shows little disparity. A box seat in 1956 cost $2.50. Today, it is $12.50 and, according to Team Marketing Report's CPI-based Fan Cost Index, it should be $12.25.

The numbers are similar across the board for concession prices. Mid-'508 hot dogs were 30 cents. Today, they are $1.80, or only 33 cents more than the equivalent in 1990 dollars. But baseball pay is spiraling out of sight even with the CPI. In 1969, the average baseball salary was $24,909.

Two years later, it was $121,000. And last year it was $597,537. Forty-four major league players are receiving $3 million or more for the 1991 season. Oakland A's star Jose Canseco is making $4.7 million this year; Babe Ruth's actual salary of $80,000 in 1927 would work out to about $490,000 in 1990s dollars about one-tenth of Canseco's pay. Twenty-six hitters are receiving $3 million or more, and none of -f.

'V- i 1 'if ad St 1 j. Associated Press Gaylord Perry pitched a 1-2-3 first inning against the Red Sox alumni, and was not challenged for throwing the illegal spitball by either the hitters or retired umpires Hank Soar and Jerry Neudecker. Perry singled and Cardenal hit a two-run double off the wall in left for a 6-0 Upper Deck lead in the second. The Red Sox came back with five runs against Wilbur Wood and John Hiller, Cecil Cooper driving in two with a 380-foot double. The Upper Deck team added three more runs off 1967 Cy Young Award winner Jim Lon-borg in the third before Tug McGraw blanked the Red Sox on one hit in the bottom half of the inning.

i' and embraced as a packed crowd of some 35,000 cheered. DiMaggio and Williams then went their separate ways. They will be honored today in a special ceremony for their feats one-half century ago. In the old timers game, the "Upper Deck Heroes beat the "Red Sox Heroes" 9-5 with Jose Cardenal going 3-3 with a pair of doubles in the three-inning exhibition. Upper Deck scored two runs in the first inning off Joe Sambito, the first coming on Reggie Jackson's RBI triple into a vacant center field.

Center fielder Jimmy Piersall was caught out of position, having gone over to the bullpen in right to chat with a friend. A i lii I BOSTON (AP) Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams greeted each other with hugs yesterday in an emotional reunion at Fenway Park 50 years after two of the greatest individual seasons in baseball history. DiMaggio, who hit safely in 56 consecutive games for the New York Yankees in 1941, and Williams, the last to hit .400 with a .406 average for the Boston Red Sox the same year, were given a special introduction before an old timers' game. DiMaggio, the famed "Yankee Clipper now 76, and Williams, the "Splendid Splinter" who is 72, made grand entrances in separate golf carts through a gate under the center field bleachers. The two Hall of Farcers met at home plate, got out of the carts MMML Clinics HADDON HTS.

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