Cy Young: Spit Signing Bonus
on Monday, March 29, 2021Cy Young Money Quote saying young players get signing bonus with low requirements. Cy Young said:
“Gosh, all a kid has to do these days is spit straight and he gets forty-thousand dollars to sign” — Cy Young
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In this quote, baseball Hall of Famer Cy Young is commenting humorously on the rising salaries in professional baseball around the early 1900s. He suggests that by this point, all a young player needed to do to earn a large signing bonus was display even basic pitching abilities like “spit[ting] straight” or throwing accurately, rather than extraordinary talent.
Young implies the financial opportunities and bidding wars between teams had inflated signing amounts to the point where modest skills could net a player $40,000, a huge sum at the time.
Overall, the quote portrays Young’s perspective that compensating amateurs had reached a point of absurdity, where natural athletic gifts were no longer required to achieve significant paydays early in one’s career. He seems amused and perhaps a bit incredulous at how quickly professional sports salaries were growing.
Birthday: March 29, 1867 – Death: November 4, 1955