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Show paai AX'HAT brand or breed of ath- letes make the most money out of professional sport? How do salaries sal-aries paid out today compare with those of the past? Those marvelling at " the salaries paid to l. :mdfc. Bob Feller, Charlie ,W "M Trippi and others fLkA fail in recall the MMj total amounts col- SW H lected by Babe L i Ruth annually from 11 r M all of his financial L". 1 deals They also mk'm' .WJ overlook the change HHtttipf picked up by Red WmEKmMsm Grange after he left Illinois to play with Red Grange the Chicago Bears. In addition to his contract with the ; Bears, the Redhead made a motion picture called "Two Minutes to 1 Play." As I recall Grange's conversation conver-sation at the time, something like j two years after he had left Illinois, j he was around $250,000 in front, and those were the golden, happy years ! when they let you keep most of what you made, when there were no 70 i and 80 and 90 per cent brackets. The Galloping Ghost at the end of two years had made and kept mora money than any four stars COUld do today. Unfortunately In other deals with C. C. Pyle, Grange blew a big part of his budding fortune. for-tune. Babe Ruth averaged far more i than $100,000 a year in his prime. , There were years when he passed j the $200,000 count. Including all the , sidelines with which he dallied. Feller and Trippi have ranged Into rich pastures, but they won't be so ' rich when they have paid taxes on their various checks. Don't forget that when Gene Tunney received ft a check for more than $900,000 after aft-er his second fight with Dempsey, more than 20 years ago, Tunney retained re-tained around 90 per cent of his ! pay. Today the tax department would take 90 per cent and leave j Tunney 10 per cent. In actual cash returns, Feller's . JHU.uuu won t approach Babe Kutn s $80,000, not by $30,000 or more. Leading Collectors What are the leading money making mak-ing sports as far as the individual star is concerned? Byron Nelson passed the $60,000 mark one season in golf prize money and this didn't include his receipts from sidelines. This was worth around $40,000 more. Ben Hogan reached the $44,500 mark In prize money in 1946. Hogan also had other pay checks that golf brought in. My guess would be a total of around $65,000 or $75,000. So the pro golfer, or at least a few of them, can get along pretty well comparatively. A Nelson or a Hogan Ho-gan will do far better than a Coulter, a Trippi, a Buddy Young or any other pro football player. But the golf drop Is rather steep after you take in the few crowd pleasers, the few big money makers. Top baseball salaries have ranged lately from Hank Greenberg's $55,-000 $55,-000 to Bob Feller's estimated $80,000. The difference In actual dollar returns re-turns won't be large after they have moved Into certain brackets where the golden harvest suddenly reaches an abrupt finish. When you figure in tbe taxes and the present cost of living, the $10,000 that Hans Wagner Wag-ner and Christy Mathewson once drew are not so far away from the ! S.",0 000 and S60.000 hnvs nf tnilav As far as pro football goes. It Is an established economic fact that the two rival leagues can't possibly break even, team for team, with the salaries they are paying today. Baseball Base-ball has 154 games a year, excluding exclud-ing the 30 or 35 exhibition contests. Against this, pro football can offer of-fer only 14 or 16 games a season. As every one knew it would, the new football league took a million dollar beating last fall. Certain National Na-tional league teams were none too happy. The only happy people were the football players, who frequently were paid double their actual value. Durocher Tops Managers Leo Durocher apparently set a new mark for high pay as a manager man-ager in 1946. Here guesses have I ranged from $60,000 to $70,000. Cer-j Cer-j tainly Leo's unfortunate winter pub-I pub-I licity isn't going to help him this I spring and summer. He has left himself too wide open for the barb ' throwers, including rival teams and the umpires. But The Lip is still one of the best managers baseball has known. I've seen him work at close range and this is no guess. It is also no guess to say that he hasn't made Brother Branch Rickey Rick-ey any too happy this winter. In the way of pay, such jockeys as Johnny Longden and Eddie ,r-caro ,r-caro head the list. Longden's life- i time earnings are rated close to the ' million dollar mark. Arearo has 1 known $90,000 and $100,000 years, j Longden and Arcaro probably are better fixed financially than other ' sporting stars. When they finally quit riding, they I have a prospect of long and profitable profit-able careers as trainers, track executives, ex-ecutives, or owners. After all, It is what you finish with, not what you get for a year, that tells the story. i |