April 20, 1987: The Day That Ruined Professional Sports Forever
Wow that is a clickbait title if I have ever heard one. But it doesn't mean that it is not true. Although maybe it would be a little less biased to call it "The day that changed professional sports forever". Let me explain...
When I was thirteen my aunt and uncle gave me one of the best birthday gifts I had ever, or would ever receive. No it was not a official Red Ryder, carbine-action; two hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time! It was a subscription to Sports Illustrated magazine. They also renewed the subscription every year for about the next five years. This means that I had every Sports Illustrated from 1984 to around 1989. If you think about all of the incredible sports stories during that time, it was truly a golden age in sports. There were so many stories about Michael Jordan, the 1985 Bears, and Mike Tyson. There was also one of the most famous Sports Illustrated covers of all time.
When I was a young kid, no one knew what athletes were paid, with a very few exceptions. It was huge gossip that Walter Payton made a quarter of a million dollars. And of course there was Babe Ruth's famous quote when asked why he was being paid more than the President of the United States. The Babe responded, "I had a better year than him". But for the most part, we didn't really know what athletes made and we didn't really care.
And then on April 20, 1987 (I got it a few days early because... be it known to all that Hanshotfirst is hereby appointed... a member of the Sports Illustrated secret circle and... is entitled to all the honors and benefits occurring there too) the sports world changed forever.
The cover of this issue of sports illustrated was filled with the pictures and salaries of baseball's top stars. The rest of teh pages contained the salary of every single player in Major League Baseball. If you want an idea of what some of them were, here's the highest salaries by position that year:
1B Eddie Murray — $2,460,000 Orioles
3B Mike Schmidt — $2,127,333 Phillies
RP Willie Hernandez — $1,060,000 Tigers
SS Ozzie Smith — $1,940,000 Cardinals
LF Jim Rice — $2,412,500 Red Sox
CF Rickey Henderson — $1,670,000 Yankees
RF Dale Murphy — $1,900,000 Braves
C Gary Carter — $1,925,571 Mets
DH Andre Thornton — $1,100,000 Indians
P Jack Morris / Fernando Valenzuela — $1,850,000 Tigers / Dodgers
By the way, Barry Bonds made $100,000 that year.
So how did that issue ruin sports? Well up until that point sports, like most places of work, kept salaries quiet. After all, if you work in an office you don't want Angela to know that Jim makes $12,000 more than her. That would cause Angela to make a stink and to demand to be paid as much as Jim. Oh and Dwight. He knows he is better than Jim and the only way to show this is by paying him more than Jim. But then Stanley finds out Dwight make more than him and... it gets out of control.
Well that is what happened... but with some of the biggest egos in the world. In order to perform at the highest level in the biggest pressure situations in front of thousands of scream fans and millions more on TV, a professional athlete simply has to have a huge ego. They can't excel without it. So when those big egos find out that a player who they think is not as good as them is making more money than they are, of course they are going to demand to be shown that their team values them more. How can you show this value... through the player's salary.
From that point on, every single player wanted more money than the player before them. As a result, salaries increases exponentially and leagues had to institute bizarre restrictions like salary caps in order to stop the math from mathing. It also meant that owners, who are always going to maximize profits, would increase ticket and concession prices. And now, those billionaire owners could point to the millionaire players as the reason why you have to pay $14 for a beer at the ball game.
So the next time you complain about ticket prices, having to pay for sports channels, the price of parking or a hot dog at your teams' next game... you know exactly who to blame: the issue of Sports Illustrated from April 20, 1987.
You know exactly who to blame: the April 20, 1987 issue of Sports Illustrated
Undoubtedly, paying $14 for a single beer at a baseball stadium seems excessive, especially now with such high salaries. Of course, I can imagine the problem it was for the owners when the salaries of each player were published, because, as they say, the ego of some players led them to demand more, and that's what led to the market distortion we see today.
That small matter is the beginning of the extravagant, multi-million dollar contracts we see now. Undoubtedly, an athlete, upon learning what another athlete they consider inferior earns and surpasses them, imagine what it would be like to go and ask for a raise. Then the owners, who also don't lose out, ensure that the fans, who come to enjoy the game, are the ones who ultimately, through these increases, allow the payment of the exorbitant salaries we see today.
We have a watchdog group near where I live and every year they file FOIA requests to all the school districts in the state and compile a list of everyone's salaries. It's kind of like this issue. They then have a database online where anyone can look up anybodies salary.
Yeah I’m Illinois they even put how much of your taxes are going to pensions. Of course they don’t mention that this is INSTEAD OF social security. So the difference is like 1%… but those are facts. And facts are meaningless. You can prove almost anything using facts… insert facepalm 🤦
Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Pretty much everyone knows the main focus of this "think tank" is to promote private schools and vouchers, but whatever.
Oh and of course they don’t mention that I have to pay 9.4% of my salary into my pension. Nope. I’m just a leech.
The April 20, 1987 salary issue really did change the conversation. Once numbers are public, comparison becomes inevitable, especially in a league like Major League Baseball where star power drives everything.
Wow, I didn’t know one magazine could change sports so much. Once salaries were out in the open, it makes sense that egos and ticket prices shot up too.
Wow, very nice sports game .
The salaries of that era compared to now are staggering; that number certainly did a lot of damage because, as long as they were public, players could demand more based on their abilities compared to others. But things have changed, and now the fans are the ones who suffer, since they have to pay more to attend and enjoy the games.