Post by Bevo on Sept 8, 2015 19:44:31 GMT
Maybe, this story hints at it.....
After the 1965 season Sandy Koufax, the best baseball pitcher on the planet, held out for a higher salary from his employer, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Koufax had won the Cy Young Award, given to the league’s best pitcher, two of the past three years, would have won it the third but for an injury, and had led the Dodgers to two World Championships in those three years. Thanks largely to his efforts, the Dodgers’ owners were profiting handsomely, but they were paying poorly. In Koufax’s holdout he teamed up, for increased leverage, with Don Drysdale, the Dodgers’ other dominating pitcher and former Cy Young winner. They were each demanding $167,000 for the 1966 season. After protracted and very public negotiations, they settled for $110,000 for Don and $125,000 for Sandy. (Koufax would win his third Cy Young that summer, as he and Drysdale helped pitch the Dodgers into yet another World Series.)
Fifty years later, the Dodgers’ current best-pitcher-on-the-planet, 27-year-old Clayton Kershaw, already with three Cy Youngs plus an MVP and counting, has a contract that pays him $32,500,000 ($32.5 MILLION) per year, or 260 times Koufax’s salary. What exactly happened to permit such a huge escalation in salaries, far beyond inflation?
What Koufax was fighting was baseball’s “Reserve Clause.” Every player’s contract had this clause, which stipulated that if the team and player were unable to agree on a contract for the coming season, the club could simply renew the previous year’s contract “for one year,” and there was absolutely nothing the player could do about it. In fact, all the clubs could and did do that repeatedly, for one year and then another and another, and the courts had upheld it. Sandy Koufax was prohibited by the contract he had signed from selling his services to the highest bidder. So his only real leverage was to refuse to pitch at all and earn zero—not a real alternative. For him and every player it was baseball slavery, equivalent to making bricks for Pharaoh.
That Reserve Clause had been in effect for decades and would remain in place for one more decade, until finally another Dodger pitcher, Andy Messersmith, managed to get it before an impartial arbitrator. When this arbitrator received the case, he immediately realized what a sham that Clause had always been: the contract’s actual language allowed the club to renew the contract only “for one year,” not one year plus another and still another and another, year-after-year-after-year. So, he immediately ruled in Messersmith’s favor, invalidating this improper use of the Reserve Clause and declaring Andy to be a Free Agent able to offer his services to the highest bidder—as were all players going forward. And today Clayton Kershaw’s agent has tested the open marketplace and determined that his services as a starting pitcher are worth upwards of $30 million annually. Clayton has earned it, and the Dodgers pay it quite willingly.
Fifty years later, the Dodgers’ current best-pitcher-on-the-planet, 27-year-old Clayton Kershaw, already with three Cy Youngs plus an MVP and counting, has a contract that pays him $32,500,000 ($32.5 MILLION) per year, or 260 times Koufax’s salary. What exactly happened to permit such a huge escalation in salaries, far beyond inflation?
What Koufax was fighting was baseball’s “Reserve Clause.” Every player’s contract had this clause, which stipulated that if the team and player were unable to agree on a contract for the coming season, the club could simply renew the previous year’s contract “for one year,” and there was absolutely nothing the player could do about it. In fact, all the clubs could and did do that repeatedly, for one year and then another and another, and the courts had upheld it. Sandy Koufax was prohibited by the contract he had signed from selling his services to the highest bidder. So his only real leverage was to refuse to pitch at all and earn zero—not a real alternative. For him and every player it was baseball slavery, equivalent to making bricks for Pharaoh.
That Reserve Clause had been in effect for decades and would remain in place for one more decade, until finally another Dodger pitcher, Andy Messersmith, managed to get it before an impartial arbitrator. When this arbitrator received the case, he immediately realized what a sham that Clause had always been: the contract’s actual language allowed the club to renew the contract only “for one year,” not one year plus another and still another and another, year-after-year-after-year. So, he immediately ruled in Messersmith’s favor, invalidating this improper use of the Reserve Clause and declaring Andy to be a Free Agent able to offer his services to the highest bidder—as were all players going forward. And today Clayton Kershaw’s agent has tested the open marketplace and determined that his services as a starting pitcher are worth upwards of $30 million annually. Clayton has earned it, and the Dodgers pay it quite willingly.
In 1972, Andy Messersmith WON the right to bid for Free Agency. THAT, changed everything.
Seems like it's been forever now...but, do you realized that Free Agency didn't START in the NFL until 1992? In the NBA, it was 1996.
Ted Turner bid $1MM for Messersmith... and, suggested he change his name to "Channel" and wear the number 17.... to promote Ted's new TV channel.... 
