Читать книгу One Season in the Sun онлайн

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With such success, it is not surprising that when he graduated, almost every major league team joined a bidding war to convince him to pitch for them. The highest bidder was St. Louis. The Cardinals paid him roughly $40,000 just to sign a contract.

Although the amount seems small compared with the million-dollar-plus bonuses that talented ballplayers can earn now on signing, $40,000 was a large sum in the early 1960s. It was almost eight times what an average American worker earned for an entire year. You could buy a new two-bedroom home in a St. Louis suburb for $8,500 or a luxury three-bedroom home on a golf course for $20,000. A new Dodge sedan carried a price sticker of $1,800. Gasoline cost less than thirty cents a gallon.

Bakenhaster’s signing was so big that newspapers across the county published stories about the deal.

The next year, not even legally old enough to vote or drink, he reached the goal he’d set not long after his parents died: Dave Bakenhaster was in the major leagues. On a hot and muggy late June afternoon in St. Louis, with more than 20,000 fans watching, he made his debut against the San Francisco Giants.