MLB History: Bob Bailey, the Forgotten “First Bonus Baby”
By Rick Soisson
Lost in the Mists of Time in One Lifetime?
Was that mistake mine or a Pittsburgh press error? I may not remember it correctly. We’re told memories are all memories, after the first recall, of other memories themselves and, therefore, are mush. But there is some real fog surrounding Bob Bailey’s signing bonus, called “the largest signing bonus ever at the time, a reported $135,000” by Baseball Reference currently.
However, the figure for Bailey’s bonus may have been $175K, the figure used by Baseball Almanac in a historical list of such bonuses. Maybe the Pittsburgh press sources were wrong at the time, leading to my errant cartoon.
The Society for American Baseball Research hedges its bet, essentially indicating the bonus may have been $175K, $150K, or $125K. You would think that somebody could be definitive about a “largest” six-figure bonus, however fleeting that designation. Even though it came in the days that pre-dated the amateur draft, the day Bailey signed was only a bit over 60 years ago.
More, or worse, than that, Bailey’s bonus at the time may have only tied the largest bonus ever because the literal next line in that BA list of bonuses indicates that Denis Menke was given a bonus of $175K in 1958. (This, in turn, is challenged as actually having been $125K.)
It seems that history, circumstance, and poor record-keeping render all such figures meaningless. There are, though, definitely people still alive who recall what a huge sum $175,000 was in 1961, as was a mere $100,000.
After all, when Ted Williams signed for $100,00 in 1957 for his age-38 season, it was breathlessly covered by the New York Times.
Seven years after Bob Bailey signed for at least $100K in June, 1961, my father was feeding a family of seven on about an $18,000 annual salary. His earnings that year, however, were bolstered by a shrewd stock purchase that netted him the princely capital gain of $6000.