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Albert Belle
Great memories!
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
Share sports (and relevant non-sports) cards and collectibles, pulls, news, memorabilia, funny stories, case and box breaks, and absolutely no ebay auctions.
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
Imagine a juiced Albert Belle. Man would have put up the first 60 2B/60 HR season, would have corked his bats twice as hard, probably would have won three MVPs and would be a Hall of Fame contender. He was already the best pure hitter of the 1990s - imagine him on 'roids. Like, a juiced Joey would have absolutely pulped Fernando Vina that one time.
And when he would have got busted, we would all say, "yeah, that makes sense. I already hated him anyway". Instead of it being players who were liked, why not Belle? It would have really been so much better narrativewise.
Like, if Jose Canseco or someone accused him, we'd all accept it immediately. That's how I'm so sure he must be clean - nobody can make that many enemies and keep his juicing quiet. I really wish we had gotten to see it. It would probably have been 2001-2004 Bonds, but better. I'm so sad I never got to witness it.
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
The BIGGEST and BEST subreddit for America's pastime: baseball. The focus is mainly on MLB, but other posts about other leagues and levels are welcome! Mike Trout **For the best user experience, we recommend disabling the Reddit redesign.**
I would not have guessed that. Belle was paid $11M in 1997, passing the record of $8.5M set by Griffey the previous year.
And for Cleveland of all teams to pay it…
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What’s better than starting a day off with your favorite Coffee and A Card? Share that great PC with us, over a cup of coffee. Be positive. All cards are welcome. All coffee is welcome. Let’s enjoy Coffee & A Card together. LFG!
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With everything going on with Oakland, Ive been listening to the audiobook The Game: Inside the Secret World of Baseball's Power Brokers" by Joe Pessah. Highly recommend. But, it will send you down many a-rabbit holes, which is how I ended up finding this great article from SI in 1996. Jerry was wild back in the 90's.
(Also, this post auto deleted because "This Day in History" posts aren't allowed "during the season"? Cmon mods. It's fucking November. I had to change the title and re-post, which is absurd).
November 19th, 1996:
Belle signed a 5-year, $55 million (equivalent to $100,263,267 today) deal with the Chicago White Sox as a free agent. This contract made him the highest-paid player in baseball for a brief period and the first player in baseball history to make $10 million in a season.
Belle's contract with the White Sox had an unusual clause allowing him to demand that he would remain one of the three highest-paid players in baseball. In October 1998 he invoked the clause, and when the White Sox declined to give him a raise he immediately became a free agent. He again became the game's highest-paid player, signing a five-year, $65 million ($114,184,978 today) deal with the Baltimore Orioles.
From Sports Illustrated, Dec 02, 1996:
What else can you do but laugh? The signing took place two weeks after an owners' meeting in which Reinsdorf was the driving force behind killing a labor agreement because, as he told SI after the Belle deal was announced, "we need some meaningful salary restraint and sharing of revenues, so everyone has a chance to compete." It was like listening to Bill Clinton espouse campaign-finance reform or Lou Holtz say he really doesn't want to break Knute Rockne's record. How could Reinsdorfsay such a thing without giggling uncontrollably?
Salary restraint? Belle's annual salary is $2.5 million more than that of the second-highest-paid player in the game, Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners, who signed his four-year, $34 million contract less than a year ago. Reinsdorf didn't disrupt the pay scale in major league baseball. He destroyed it. Together, Belle and White Sox first baseman Frank Thomas will earn approximately $18 million next season, which exceeds the payroll of four small-market teams, among them acting commissioner Bud Selig's Milwaukee Brewers. As owner of the Chicago Bulls, Reinsdorf also signed Michael Jordan to a one-year, $30 million contract last summer, meaning Reinsdorf is to the salary structure of players what Ricki Lake is to the literacy rate among teens.
After the White Sox went 85-77 last season and finished 14 1/2 games behind the Indians in the American League Central, Reinsdorf made up his mind to give his customers the best team money could buy. But before embarking on his shopping spree, he solicited the advice of Thomas, his resident superstar. "Frank wanted Belle--period," said Reinsdorf. "I said to him, 'How about Barry Bonds? I hear he's available.' And Frank said, 'Oh, no. Albert's better. He's the guy I want.'"
Read the Full Article from December 1996 in the .
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