Cost of living adjustment for baseball salaries

When I see unadjusted comparisons of salary figures between today and decades ago, I always want to take out my calculator. Today's example was in our Sports section, on page 6C. The AP reporter, writing about the retirement of Don Fehr, head of the players' union, was trying to make a point about how salaries had increased during Fehr's tenure.

He noted that the average salary when Fehr took over 26 years ago in 1983 was $289,000 and by last year it had risen to $2.9 million.

That seems like a meteoric rise. But when you adjust it for inflation, the 1983 average is more like around $624,000. I use the cost-of-living calculator of the American Institute for Economic Research. Different calculators will give somewhat different results, but you get the idea.

Now, going from an apples-to-apples average of $624k to $2.9 million is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not as dramatic as the 10-fold increase suggested by the article.

But forget about averages for the moment. There is no question that the baseball stars of today - as opposed to the journeymen - are making hugely more money than the stars of yesteryear. When Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers staged their famous battle to get better contracts before the 1966 season, they eventually got around $125k for Koufax and $110k for Drysdale. These were arguably two of the best pitchers in baseball history. In current dollars, Koufax ended up getting around $800,000 a year and Drysdale $720,000.

If they were playing today, they would be making between $15 million and $20 million a year. Apiece.

There is no question that star ballplayers were way underpaid before the era of free agency and the quarter century-plus of Don Fehr at the helm of the players union. Can you imagine getting both Koufax and Drysdale for around $1.5 million, combined?