3 Who was the first baseball player to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine? Let me give you some hints. He was a pitcher who played for the Detriot Tigers. His first season in the leage his won-loss record was 19 wins and 11 losses. He was the AL rookie of the year in 1976.
The answer is Mark(The Bird) Fidrych. I loved to watch him pitch. He was a character. He was very animated. He would get down on his hands and knees and groom the pitcher's mound around the pitcher's rubber. He would talk to himself and talk to the ball. He was a competitor who loved to win but what attracted fans to him was he was just a humble, friendly guy. He was a hero that we could relate to. A farm boy who make it big. He was one of us whose dream came true.Us fans were able to enjoy his success because he was like us,
What do you think his salary was in 1976? Remember this was before sports stars were paid astronomical amounts. His yearly salary was $16,500 dollars. True things were a lot cheaper in 1976 but I remember what I was making at the grocery store. I was freshly graduated from high school and was full time at Rick' Super Saver in Oskie, KS. I was on salary and I worked forty hours a week. My paycheck before taxes was 100 dollars a week. That would make ny yearly salary 5200 dollars a year. He would of make about three times more money than me.
The minimum salary for a major league player in 2019 was 555,000. A full time stocker at a grocery store makes about ten bucks and hours. That would be 400 week of twenty thousand a year. That would figure out to be more than 25 times what a stocker would make. What a crazy world we live in. I bet if we lowered the pay not everyone would want to be a major league player. If that happened the players who played would be the ones who truly love the game. Ticket prices would go down. Everyone could go to a game without breaking the piggy bank.