These signings are nothing new. It's been going on now for 30 years. Until the fans stop showing up the salaries won't drop.
A Superstar Goes Free
By LEONARD KOPPETT
December 15, 1974 NEW YORK - Jim (Catfish) Hunter, baseball's most successful pitcher in recent seasons, is now free to offer his services to any of the 24 major league clubs, including the Oakland A's, who failed to live up to the terms of his existing contract. As a free agent, Hunter, 28, may well command the largest bonus-andsalary arrangement in baseball history. He has been a 20-game winner four straight years and is the current American League Cy Young Award winner, coming off a 2512 won-lost record last season.
No player with Hunter's credentials has ever been on the open market. He has won 106 games in the last five seasons, has pitched a perfect game and led the American League in earned-run averages this year. He has pitched 10 major league seasons and not one inning in the minors. But his case has no general implication for other players, or the reserve clause in general. The issue is simply the failure of Charles O. Finley, owner and operator of the A's, to carry out payments to Hunter in the way his contract required.
Last winter, they agreed on a two-year contract for $100,000 a year, but each year only $50,000 was to be paid to Hunter as straight salary; the remaining $50,000 was to be paid to some deferment plan of Hunter's choosing. The straight-salary part was paid routinely, but the deferred payments were not made because Finley disapproved of the method Hunter chose (since this seemed to involve unfavorable tax consequences for Finley). By the time the regular season ended, requests by Hunter to have the deferred payments made were still not honored, and he argued that his contract had thus been broken by Finley. If he had no contract, Hunter said, he was then a free agent.
Finley, backed by Lee MacPhail, president of the American League, insisted that no free-agent question was involved; that the only dispute was about the method of payment and that there had not been a violation of the contract but merely a difference of interpretation. He offered Hunter the other $50,000 as direct payment. Hunter, pressing his right to take the case to arbitration, was represented in a hearing by the Major League Players Association. The case was heard by Peter Seitz last month, and Seitz reached his decision late last week.
Untried high school and college players have been given bonuses as large as $100,000 just for signing, so Hunter, physically at his peak and only 28 years old, might command a deal far above $200,000.
Jim (Catfish) Hunter signed with the Yankees a few weeks later on New Year's Eve for $3.75 million over five years - triple any other player's salary. He won 23 games for them in 1975 and was a World Series starter in each of the next three seasons.
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