The star-independent. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1904-1917, 1915-03-08
PLAYERS salaries ARE
About UP TO THE Limit
Financial Side Of Baseball Promises to
Be Important Factor This Season
Salaries Are Five to Seven Times
Greater Than in EARLY Nineties

New York, March S.-The financial
side of baseball promises to be one of
the most important factors of the pro-
fessional game during the coming sea-
son. Recent readjustments in the sport
has confronted the magnstes with
problems which can only be answered
at the expiration of the 1916 pennant
races. Far from the least of these is
the question of the players salary. A
large majority of the club owners in
both major and minor league circuits
are convinced that the limit has been
reached in this direction and curtail-
ment is necessary. just how and when
to put this economy into effect is a
proposition over which there is a wide
varience of opinion.
Manager Connie Mack, of the Phila-
delphia Athletics, has shown Spartin
qualities by pruning his former world IS
championship team 10y sale and re-
lease until Coombs, Bender, Plank and
Collins are no longer Athletics and
Bakers connection with the club is
uncertain. President Edward Barrow,
of the International League, has noti-
| fed the various club owners in his cir
euit that reductions in players sal
aries were in order. Other league exc
cutives and club owners favor similar
moves but are deferred by long term
! contracts which cannot be violated.
The move toward economy can be seen,
however, in the unconditional release
of players wherever possible. Not in
many years has there been the number
of unconditional releases, recorded
since the close of the 1914 season.
A prominent baseball official said
recently that the average follower of
the game did not realize the increased
cost of the game due to the advance.
ment in players salaries. Various
angles in the business side of the sport
made it necessary, including the in.
creasing popularity of baseball, indie
pendent opposition and the banding to.
! gether of the players themselves
Looking at it in broad minded man.
ner, he said that there were conditions
in the situation which warranted in.
creasos but in many cases increases
were out of proportion to the services
/ rendered.
1t has been estimated that the aver
| age salary paid by major league clubs
has been doubled in the last ten years
In the case of majority of the play.
ers the increase is less than 500 q
year, but when the contracts of stars
like Eddie Collins, Iris Speaker, Walt
er Johnson, Jake Qsubert aud Sam
Crawford are figured in, the general
advance reaches surprising amount
The salary limit of the National
League was $4,000 fifteen years ago
To-day the salary of the mediocre
| player exceeds these figures and there
is no limit for the stars.
Baseball authorities who have
studied the situation carefully, point
out that under the conditions that pre-
vailed in the early nineties a star in
field and outteld containing such play
ers as Delehany, Dljoie, Cross, Fiicf
and Thomas, could be secured for al
annual outlay of approximately SIT,
/ coo. To-day a similar combination
would require yearly expenditure o.
five to seven times that amount. Ye
the gate receipts prove that attendance
has not increased in anything like the
same ratio. Eddie Collins acquisition
and contract is said TO represent al
outlay of more than 100000 during
the next five years. A Chicago statist
ician has figures that he will have tt
draw well over quarter million extr;
attendance to the White Sox park j
he is to individually repay the invest
ment.