Author: Evan Fleischer / Source: Big Think
- Athletes didn’t start to make serious money in the U.S. until Curt Flood sued baseball.
- The emergence of television advertising also began to play a role.
- The purchasing power of the average American hasn’t moved since the 1970s.
There have always been rich athletes, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that today — in this century — there are more rich athletes now than there used to be.
If we’re to define ‘now’ as occupying the 20th century and ‘rich’ as getting paid more than one million dollars per year, then we can say that some of the first ‘rich’ athletes of our modern times included Dave Parker (MLB), Nolan Ryan (MLB), Moses Malone (NBA), Bobby Orr (NHL), Derek Sanderson (NHL), and Lam Jones (NFL.)There were certainly rich players before the modern age. Not only was the Roman athlete Diocles purportedly worth $15 billion at the end of his life, but Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, who nearly made the equivalent of one million per year during the height of his powers, was so comfortable with his wealth that he was rumored to have thrown a piano into a lake to test his strength. But there’s a reason why athlete wealth has hit new heights.
The powder keg
So what prompted the change? What took us from an era of soccer players being former coal miners to soccer players being rich? What sparked the sudden contemporary surge? The short answer: The re-establishment of sport as a modern spectacle, free agency, and television.
Free agency is when an athlete, in effect, offers themselves up to highest or best bidder. And, until relatively recently, that wasn’t the case. From 1879 to 1975, the ‘reserve clause’ was the rule by which American sports teams operated. A ‘reserve clause’ effectively meant that a player could not negotiate a contract with another team. A player could be traded, sold, or released at a team’s whim.
One reason why this problem persisted for so long — why a team could buy or sell a player without so much as a question put to the player — was the fact that Major League Baseball had an exemption from federal Antitrust laws. Why? A decent argument could simply be central position baseball occupied in American culture. Judges knew what baseball meant, so they kept finding ways to ‘protect’ it.
The reserve clause finally began to change when Curt Flood refused a trade from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969. He objected to how poorly the Phillies had been doing, the quality of the stadium, and his concern over encountering racist fans.
Flood eventually sued Major League Baseball. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately sided with Major League Baseball. Flood was blackballed from the game….
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