Money Makes The Player Go

I said, "Fine, what's the new job pay?"

He says, "It pays $6,000, but that's 12 months of the year."

I said, "Well, look, suppose I make out your contract at $7,500 for the whole year?"

He says, "Let me think about it," and the next day he comes in and signs.

You may think you know a ballplayer, but you never really know him till you've negotiated salaries with him. Years before the world ever knew that Chuck Connors was a good actor and a zany fellow I knew it, because every year I was fighting him over his salary and every year he would do some crazy thing like mailing me a contract signed in blood. I mean, it was only red ink, but he'd come in my office in Montreal and swear up and down that he had opened a vein and signed the contract because "you might as well have my blood, you've got everything else," and then he'd moan and groan around my office like Hamlet's ghost or somebody. I think the most we ever paid him at Montreal was $450 a month, and for this we got a pretty fair first baseman and all the theatrics we could stand. It was a bargain. I'm glad we don't have to pay his salary now.

Even the nicest guys would surprise you by doing downright nasty things to get more money, and then everybody'd wind up being sorry. Take a guy like Danny McDevitt. One year he sends his contract back to the office in 50 pieces. No letter, no nothing. I was furious. I wrote him: "You sent that torn-up contract back to my assistant, Dick Walsh . If you had sent it to me, you'd be out of baseball for a long time. But I'm going to give you another chance. Enclosed are the pieces of your contract. When you get it all pasted back together again, we'll talk business." We did, too.

One year Carl Erskine sent his unsigned contract back without a letter, a very impolite thing to do, and I ask you: Is there a nicer guy in the world than Carl Erskine ? I mean, if there were ever a contest to find the nicest guy alive, it would have to be between Carl Erskine and Gil Hodges . And when I get this contract back, without even the courtesy of a little scribbled note, I can't understand it. I write Carl a letter saying that of all the people I know he is the last I expect to treat me like that. So a few days later I'm in Chicago at a meeting and the phone rings, and it's Erskine , calling from his home in Indiana . He can hardly talk, he's so upset with himself. "Buzzie," he says, "I don't know what got into me. I didn't mean it. Send me a contract right away!" So I did, and he signs. And the nice thing about it is simply this: if I don't get mad, Carl gets more money, right? As it was, I had him at a disadvantage, and I got off easy. As I've said, we don't negotiate by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Then there are the little things you say and do that come back to haunt you years later. One year Duke Snider visited me in Montreal after he had made the big club, and he told me he was making $9,000 a year for Mr. Rickey. I said, "Duke, when you get your contract next year, you tell Mr. Rickey he should double it. Be firm! He'll give in. You're worth every penny of it."

When next year's contract time came around, who do you think is general manager of the Dodgers ? That's right, and I send Duke a contract for $15,000. He's got a memory like an elephant, that guy, and back comes a polite letter informing me that he had been advised by a very wise baseball executive to demand $18,000 this year, "and I was led to believe I'd get it." What could I do? He got it.

Of course, the easiest players to deal with are the ones who leave it all up to you. They have enough faith in me to know that they are going to be paid what they're worth. The rest of the guys get what they're worth, too, but not till they've argued and hollered and raised hell to their delight, the newspapers' delight and mine. I cherish a wire from Johnny Podres : ACCEPT TERMS FOR 1963. I hadn't mailed his contract yet. Willie Davis is another one who puts the signed contract on my desk every year and I fill in the details. Johnny Roseboro has done that, Sandy Koufax has, and so have plenty of others. On a few occasions I have reversed the procedure and passed a contract across my desk and told the ballplayer, "Just write down what you're worth, and I'll sign it." You have to pick your spot; you don't want to give a contract like this to a guy who'll fill in $1 million and cause some kind of ugly scene when you renege. The funny thing is, almost invariably the player will put down a figure lower than you had expected to pay him. He gets so carried away by your faith in him and your good sportsmanship, and he's not going to repay you by being a louse, is he? So he puts down a fair price, and everybody's happy.