Show salaries of athletes THEY HEY were talking about tte tl a money a professional athlete could make and how much most of these athletes were worth in the first place among eight or ten old time writers in the discussion it was generally voted that the ring business was the most ed this means that a few were far overpaid and the others were far underpaid for example joe louis has bowled over close to four million dollars for his 62 fights now tour four million dollars is quite a chunk more than any other contestant ow could collect from any other e game above that 1 we 11 say louis I picked up thousand dollars for his last fight babe ruth that is about the pay that 10 ot of the highest paid ballplayers would get for an entire season of games but after all the fight charn chan pion collects because he be can draw when two ball clubs meet there may be 50 ball bill players engaged when fighters meet only two in the main event get any real money and one of these gets most of it after all a con Is entitled to get his part of 0 the swag which his drawing power can earn babe ruth was paid as high as 80 a year he was actually worth more than double this amount to his team the league and base ball in general it would be bard hard to measure how much he actually barnea I 1 ve seen home teams drawing 1500 1 a game jump to 33 when the babe came along feta get rich but while jack dempsey louis and gene tunney have all collected huge amounts and a few others have picked up important checks from the fight game the vast majority get little except queer noises in their skulls it s a tough game it if you make good its it s a thousand times tougher when you dont don t commissioner eddie eagen tells me there are more boxers than one might think who are putting away from 50 to 60 a year this is abaz ing when you figure the cut the manager and his helpers get the fight game Is good only to the few for the others it Is largely a matter of scrambled brains it Is not a profession to be recommended too highly to the youth of the land baseball and football are the two best average paying games especially in the higher circuits oddly enough more than a few young stars who dabble in both sports have to make certain drastic decisions alvin dark of the braves was of ered more to play football than he gets playing baseball dark picked baseball and the braves charley tried out both games and this season the ex georgia star decided to give all Us his time to the chicago cardinals leaving baseball flat he ile found the comb combination mation too much to handle chuck conerly of mississippi and bobby layne of texas were two baseball stars both had bright baseball futures both picked football with the high guarantees now offered years ago walter hagen could have been a noted big league star one of the greatest in m the game hagen picked golf and then pro ceedee to roll up a million dollars in a few years which the carefree halg haig promptly spent joe gordon was an oregon great at football before he switched en to baseball of the braves was another football star who picked baseball for a money maker there are many others I 1 could mention ballplayers last longer one thing to be remembered Is that one lasts longer on a general average at baseball than he does at football the wear and tear so expensive A big league ballplayer with any particular merit should be good for 12 or 14 years few rew football players last that long the me mel heins sammy baughs and sid luckmann Luck mans are scarce bob feller leads both leagues in the way of a pay check at some thing like 85 a year which so far this dizzy year rapid robert chasn t come close to earning ted williams Is next and joe dimaggio is third they get from 60 to 75 and are earning it every day as two of the leading stars stan gets nothing like these amounts although the cardinal brilliant Is worth as much as any man in m the game there will be a big re resh lfting shifting of values next year up and down is drawing something like 32 this season but at his pres ent pace if he isn t a 60 entry they have no ballplayers in the national league |