Ohtani Broke the Bank, So Let's Break It All Down
It’s strange: I have so much to say about the Dodgers signing Shohei Ohtani to a 10-year, $700 million deal … and also so little to say, because I get the sense that everybody has already said just about everything I’ve been thinking.
I don’t say this as a knock; this is just where we are. It has felt like everything I’ve read about Ohtani and the Dodgers and the money and the process and the marketing and the reporting has sounded more or less the same. Again, it’s not a knock; it’s not like I have anything new or interesting to say, either. I just don’t think there’s much insightful stuff to say just yet.
Ohtani is great. The contract is huge. The Dodgers are loaded. Baseball needs Ohtani to be its brightest star. Ohtani broke the news himself. Baseball reporters did not cover themselves in glory. Etc.
So I’ll just give you a whole bunch of notes I made about Ohtani and maybe you can make something useful of it yourself.
On March 8, 1930, Babe Ruth signed a two-year, $160,000 contract with the New York Yankees. This is probably the first famous sports contract in American history, but what is not as well remembered is that Ruth actually settled for that contract. He had stubbornly held out for months and had already turned down this exact contract. He wanted a three-year deal at $85,000 a year.
But as spring training began, Ruth began to waver. Sportswriters were in his ear telling him that owner Jacob Ruppert — famously known as “the Colonel” — would never give in to his demands and that $80,000 was a whole lot of money.
And on March 8, Ruth showed up at the Yankees’ spring training facility in St. Petersburg, Fla. — in cream-colored golf knickers, gray stockings, black-and-white-striped shoes and a dark jacket, according to the New York Daily News — and humbly tapped Ruppert on the shoulder and said: “My dear Colonel, could I see you for about 10 minutes?”
Five minutes later, they emerged from the meeting and Ruppert grandiosely pronounced: “Gentlemen, all I have to say is that Mr. Ruth has agreed to that two-year contract.”
At which point, Ruth reportedly said: “Hell’s bells? What time is it? Quarter after one? Hey, I gotta beat it to the ballpark!”
It was the biggest sports contract ever signed to that point — about $1.35 million in today’s dollars about $10,000 more per year than Ruth had been making. The big-city and small-town newspapers across the country — to offer some perspective about how much money that was — pointed out that Ruth would be drawing $5,000 more per year than President Herbert Hoover himself.
As the years went on, the contrast between Ruth’s salary and Hoover’s led to one of baseball’s all-time stories, one you’ve probably heard. Supposedly, Ruth was confronted with the fact that he would be getting paid more than President Hoover. He huffed and responded, “Hell, why not? I had a better year than he did.”
Not to be a party pooper, but that probably never happened. For one thing,