I just finished watching The Rookie plus I vaguely remember reading about this Jim Morris guy in Sports Illustrated. The movie ends with his debut in the majors and his striking some guy out. So what happened to him after this? Did he just fade away, get sent back to minors, have some success, make some money?
He played a few games in 99 and 00, and then, given that he was a mediocre 36 year old pitcher on a bad team who had more than fulfilled his wildest dreams, retired on a fairly high note, in the majors, IIRC. A great story.
Thanks flymaster
It would seem that someone with a 98 mile an hour fastball could have done better than your link shows. But then I know next to nothing about what it takes to be a successful major league pitcher. Poor control? No curve?
I?m also surprised he only made $200,000 in 00, I thought everyone in the majors made at least a million.
Morris’s arm injuries flared up again and he decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to rehab it.
He also suffered from being not all that good to begin with.
Interesting side note: Angels relief pitcher Brendan Donnelly was cut from his AA team to make room for Morris on the roster.
So while Morris likely made a fair amount of money off of the movie, Donnelly got to make the major league minimum this year plus his WS bonus and a likely raise next year.
Happy endings for everyone!
See http://users.pullman.com/rodfort/SportsBusiness/MLB/Salaries/Salary00.xls for a spreadsheet of all players’ salaries in 2000. The minimum salary was $200k that year.
I saw a recent article (can’t find it) that showed how the average baseball salary is heavily skewed by a relatively small number of players making huge amounts. And this distortion has been getting more pronounced year by year.
Still, I’d accept the minimum of $300k (for 2003) to work 7 or 8 months of the year.
Here is a story on his retirement announcment.