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Show IPff tJ - i A LL quiz clubs, interested in baseball, are hereby called to order. We are able to offer them a few interesting and important queries that even more ball players can't answer. They came to us from the active brain of Ford Frick, president of the National league. Here they are: 1. How long is the playing career of the average big league ball player? 2. What Is the average amount of money big league ball players make in their playing time? 3. What Is the average length of time it takes to develop de-velop a big leaguer, starting from his Grantland Rice first ln the minors? It has remained for Ford Frick, one of the best officials baseball ever knew, to supply the correct answers. It was no easy job since President Frick had to look back through the lifetime careers of a long, long list. I happened to be with Bill Dickey, Joe Gordon and Red Rolie when Ford put on his quiz and none of us came within brassie distance of hitting the target. Average Playing Lifetime "There have been leaguers who knew only one year of service," Frick said. "There have been others, oth-ers, such as Ty Cobb, Pop Anson and Jack Quinn, who hung on for nearly 25 years. But in adding up all the figures I discovered the average big league player's career is just 8! years. "Those who passed the 20-year mark include Cobb, Anson, Wagner, Ruth, Lajoie, Quinn, Speaker, Cy Young, and a few more. But the average av-erage span is SVz seasons." This was a trifle astonishing to Messrs. Dickey, Gordon and Rolfe, who had guessed from four to six years. Question No. 2 is "How much do ball players collect, on an average, through their playing careers?" Mr. Frick had the answer to this. "The amount," he said, "is $120,-000. $120,-000. This would mean around $14,000 a year. Salaries have ranged from $3,000 to Babe Ruth's $80,000 and it was Babe Ruth who lifted the average far above old levels. "This mark is well above what it was 10 years ago. It is far above what it was 20 years ago." Holdouts of 1910 I recall over 30 years ago when Larry Lajoie and Ed Delehanty, two of the greatest of all time, were offered contracts for $2,500 and held out for $3,000. And they were both around the .400 class. The largest salary Christy Math-ewson Math-ewson ever drew was $12,500 when be was winning from 33 to 35 games a year. The highest paid men today include in-clude Hank Greenberg, Bob Feller, Buck Newsom and Joe DiMaggio. Their average is above $30,000. Until Ford Frick dug up the general gen-eral average, I doubt that anyone ever guessed that an 8-year ball player would collect $120,000 for his work. The highest payrolls today belong to the Yankees, Tigers and Red Sox. All three have such heacMiners as Greenberg, DiMaggio, Newsom, Dickey, Gehringer, Foxx, Grove, Williams, Ruffing and Gordon, who are all in the higher brackets. "One queer feature," Frick said, "is that most of the higher salaries come in a ball player's tenth or eleventh season, when he has become be-come a star." There is a report out that the only ball player who was ever sent a blank contract and told to write in his own figures was Bob Grove of the Red Sox. Whereupon Where-upon Grove sent the unsigned contract back to Tom Yaw-key Yaw-key with the request re-quest that Yawkey do the writing. "Carl Hubbell was sent the same mv "wi; m type of contract," someone said, "and Lef'y Grove Cail wrote in less than the club expected ex-pected to pay." Third question "How long does it take to turn a minor leaguer into a major leaguer?" Again speaking in terms of the average. "After a thorough check, I find It takes just 3'A years for all except the pitchers.' It takes the pitchers years to be ready for big league bats," President Ford Frick said. "I am taking the time from the first minor league start until the player is ready for a big league job. Many, of course, have come along in a year or two. A few have broken in directly from college play or sandlot play. Others have taken six or seven years or even longer be-I be-I fore they arrived with the right . equipment. I j "But a thorough search and study , of the records shows that a minor 'leaguer usually needs Zi years' ' training before he can hold down a major league job and keep it for a while," he added. |
