Cy Young: Spit Signing Bonus

Posted by admin on Monday, March 29, 2021

Cy 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

 

 

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.