1872.17

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Athletics Show Annual Expenses, Income for 1872

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags	Business of BaseballBusiness of Baseball
Location
City/State/Country:	Philadelphia, PA, United States
Modern Address
Game	Base BallBase Ball
Immediacy of Report	Contemporary
Age of Players	AdultAdult
Holiday
Notables
Text	The Philly Athletics released their 1872 income/expenses for about $26,000.
Sources	Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, November 17, 1872
Warning
Comment	Richard Hershberger, 11/17/2022, 150 years ago in baseball: "The Athletic Club's financial statement for 1872. Professional baseball had not yet reached the point where it hid its books and claimed poverty. Here in 1872 the books were treated as a public matter, and the poverty was entirely genuine. This is an "inside baseball" discussion, but worth examining. If you just look at the bottom line, the club came out just barely ahead for the year. It looks even better when you see that they paid out $3000 to retire debt. (For a debt of $5141? Perhaps there was some negotiated forgiveness. We are not told.) But look at the top line: Dues from members. The Athletics were not a stock company, but a club of the old fraternal model, which sponsored a baseball team. What is in it for the dues-paying members? They aren't meeting twice a week in the summer to take their exercise together. Those days are long past. They are essentially a booster club. The team won the pennant last year, so people are eager to associate themselves with it, and to secure premium seating. Spoiler alert: Boston will get this year's pennant. The real question is can a club field a successful professional team based on gate receipts? There are a few odds and ends of additional revenue, but they are tiny. The answer we see here is "no." Take out the member dues, and even if we also take out the debt payment, the result is in the red. The largest expense by far is player salaries. (Harry Painter, in case you were wondering, is the "superintendent," i.e. the groundskeeper.) The challenge will be to lower this expense line. Another spoiler: Things will get worse before they get better. Baseball of the 1870s will be strewn with financial failures." --- Stephen Dodson added: "This is fascinating. I was always outraged at the collusion to keep players' salaries down, but I never realized how tight the finances were. The other remedy would have been to charge more for admittance, but I guess they were already charging what the market would bear?" Richard replied, in part: "The solution they found going into the 1880 season was the reserve system. This still exists in modified form, now via collective bargaining and for a limited portion of a player's career. Something like this was necessary. Even the more thoughtful players recognized this. When the Brotherhood formed after fifteen years after this excerpt, its position was to accept the reserve system. Selling or trading players without the player's consent was a different matter entirely. This was a line in the sand. In the excitement leading up to the Players' League war the distinction between the reserve and player sales was lost, but that was a matter of excited passions." Edit with form to add a comment
Query	His anyone systematically tracked player salaries in he early pro years? A: Baseball reference lists 13 players as being on the Athletics in 1871. Three of these played only 1 game. The standard roster of 10 players were paid an average of $1,500 apiece, per the article saying the players were paid $15,000 and change. [ba] Edit with form to add a query
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Submitted by	Richard Hershberger
Submission Note	FB Posting, 11/17/2022
Has Supplemental Text

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1872.17

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