The Money Pitch: Baseball Free Agency and Salary Arbitration

By Roger Abrams

Book Overview

Professional baseball players have always been well paid. In 1869, Harry Wright paid his Cincinnati Red Stockings about seven times what an average working-man earned. Today, on average, players earn more than fifty times the average worker's salary. In fact, on December 12, 1998, pitcher Kevin Brown agreed to a seven-year, $105,000,000 contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the first nine-figure contract in baseball history. Brown will be earning over $400,000 per game; more than 17,000 fans have to show up at Dodger Stadium every night just to pay his salary. Why are baseball players paid so much money? In this insightful book, legal scholar and salary arbitrator Roger Abrams tells the story of how a few thousand very talented young men obtain their extraordinary riches. Juggling personal experience and business economics, game theory and baseball history, he explains how agents negotiate compensation, how salary arbitration works, and how the free agency "auction" operates. In addition, he looks at the context in which these systems operate: the players' collective bargaining agreement, the distribution of quality players among the clubs, even the costs of other forms of entertainment with which baseball competes. Throughout, Dean Abrams illustrates his explanations with stories and quotations -- even an occasional statistic, though following the dictum of star pitcher, club owner, and sporting goods tycoon Albert Spalding, he has kept the book as free of these as possible. He explains supply and demand by the cost of a bar of soap for Christy Mathewson's shower. He illustrates salary negotiation with an imaginary case based on Roy Hobbs, star of The National. He leads the reader through the breath-taking successes of agent Scott Boras to explain the intricacies of free agent negotiating.Although studies have shown that increases in admissions prices precede rather than follow the rise in player salaries, fans are understandably bemused by skyrocketing salaries. Dean Abrams does not shy away from the question of whether it is "fair" for an athlete to earn more than $10,000,000 a year. He looks at issues of player (and team) loyalty and player attitudes, both today and historically, and at what increased salaries have meant for the national pastime, financially and in the eyes of its fans. The Money Pitch concludes that "the money pitch is a story of good fortune, good timing, and great leadership, all resulting from playing a child's game -- a story that is uniquely American."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156639774X
• ISBN13: 9781566397742
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Baseball Economics

If you are looking to gain a better understanding of salary economics related to baseball, search no further. The Money Pitch is a good resource to educate any reader about the principles and logic behind such a huge economic enterprise. This book is very informative and reveals many facts that are not common knowledge. Upon reading this book one gains a new perspective toward baseball and broadens his understanding of how economics are applied in sports.

The Business of Baseball

I feel that this Novel was well written but almost too in depth. Abrams throws so many facts and ideas at the reader that it is often overwhelming and hard to follow. He uses amazing analogies and anecdotes to help an average reader understand more about baseball. When you are able to feel the passion in his writing the novel gets very entertaining and at the same time you are underdstanding elements of the game which you could not learn by watching a game. He discusses free agency and various elements of the game as well as the origins of baseball. Overall I felt it was worth my time and I am pleased that a book laced with economics could be so interesting.

Phenomenal

This book takes a very complicated set of rules and regulations dealing with the overall economic principles of baseball salaries and simplifies them for the average baseball fan. Through the eyes of an actual arbitrator, this book uses first-hand, non-fictional examples, along with hypotheticals, to take the reader on a journey to the center of salary economics. I would suggest this book to anyone hoping to get a sense of how the multi-million dollar salaries of today have evolved from humble beginnings.