Originally Posted by Amazin69
Far be it from me to play historian on Bru's side of the East River, but that contains several inaccuracies.
Mantle did not sign from a minor-league team, but directly out of high school. The Yanks farmed him out for a few years, but he was always their property.
The Yankee farm that Mickey was briefly sent down to in 1951 was the Kansas City Blues. The Athletics were still in Philadelphia and would remain so through 1954.
Mickey did not get $100,000. Or even $10,000. He signed for $140/month and a whopping signing bonus of
$1500.
Given that, the other owners hardly resented the Yankees obtaining Mantle. The deals that the Yanks made with the Kansas City A's (once Roy and Earle Mack sold the team and Arnold Johnson moved it to KC and Johnson was always eager to deal) were about the Yanks picking up top players in exchange for minor-league prospects. (Roger Maris, plus Joe DeMaestri and Kent Hadley, in exchange for Norm Siebern, plus a fading Don Larsen and Hank Bauer, and a never-was Marv Throneberry, for example.)
The only way the Kansas City connection enabled the Yankees to spend extra dough was that it was a way for them to duck the rules that forced teams to keep "bonus babies" on their bench for several years, as the Dodgers had to do with the 18-year-old Sandy Koufax. Here, the Yanks could sign a Clete Boyer to a nice bonus, "trade" him to Kansas City to duck the "can't send him down" requirement, and then "trade" to get him back when Boyer was Bronx-ready.
Yes, Major League teams sometimes bought from minor-league teams (especially when the PCL was still independent), but that wasn't solely the Yankees. Connie Mack bought Lefty Grove from the (minor-league) Orioles for $100,600 in 1925. Quite often the cash was only part of a trade: the Red Sox sent $35,000, two major leaguers and two minor leaguers to the (minor league) Padres for Ted Williams, and the Yankees got Joe DiMaggio from the San Francisco Seals for $50,000, two major leaguers and two minors.
The amateur draft was not instituted because the owners were afraid of "the Yankees buying all the players" but because all the teams wanted to screw the "unproven kids" out of their negotiating leverage, rather than paying Rick Reichardt $200,000 or Bob Bailey $175,000 or whatever. (Particularly if the "kids" were now allowed to be significantly darker than Reichardt or Bailey, given the easing of unofficial racial quotas.)
Like the draft, a salary cap is an anti-competitive device designed to help oligarchs oppress workers and steal a disproportionate amount of the revenue. The fact that some people tend to resent a well-paid worker rather than the corporate pigs who inflame passions against the workers through their compliant flacks in the press doesn't change that. JMO.
Yes, because the NFL's primary source of revenue is from the TV contract, which is shared equally between all 32 teams.
As for attendance, enough people live near enough to Green Bay that they've sold out every home game since November 22, 1959, when 297 seats went unsold, probably because the Redskins were a lousy draw.
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