Bonus Bonanza

Chunky Fan Dale Blasingame, 49, a moderately successful grape broker, glanced around the stands at Fresno, Calif.'s Roosevelt High one day last spring and grinned happily. Scattered among the gum-chewing, chattering teenagers were 30 older but equally familiar figures. To Dale Blasingame, those men meant money in the bank. Every one was a major league scout, and every one was sizing up Dale's 6-ft. 2-in., 185-lb., 17year-old son Wade. "I'm in the business of analyzing values," says Blasingame, "and I had a good idea of what the market was on a lefthanded pitcher like my boy."

Business Was Good. It was a seller's market. That day young Wade Blasingame effortlessly beat Hanford High 5-2, struck out 16 batters. By graduation he had a won-lost record of 26-0, five no-hitters, an average of 15 strike-outs a game, a niggardly 0.45 earned-run average, and eight major league clubs on his tail. While a platoon of scouts watched, wheedled and courted Wade. Dale Blasingame did all the talking for his boy. The talk was blunt, sometimes brutal. "Half a dozen teams were in there with high offers," says he. "Some others frankly confessed they were on budgets, and I just as frankly told them that they weren't even close." The San Francisco Giants, hoping to harvest a homegrown product, sent out three scouts last year, gave up when the bids for young Blasingame went into orbit. "We didn't mind," said Dale Blasingame. "Business was pretty good."

Two hours after he graduated, young Wade Blasingame finally got into the act himself, signed a contract with the Milwaukee Braves for a $100,000 bonus. "Not a penny less and not a penny more," says his proud father. "And he gets a darn good salary besides."

Big Binge. Wade Blasingame was only one of several bonus babies the Braves have landed this season by all but digging into the mortgage money: four other pitchers cost them around $275,000. (Clubs never disclose exact bonuses, are suspected of wildly inflating some figures for publicity, deflating others to prevent resentment among their regular players.) Nor was Milwaukee the only club showering greenbacks on green schoolboys. June graduations brought on a binge of bonus payments that have cost the majors close to $4,000,000, and Los Angeles Dodger Scouting Director Al Campanis figures that teen-age stars will take in as much as $14 million before the year ends. (They got $7,500,000 last year.) Some of the more lavish handouts:

P: Just 15 minutes after he became eligible to seal a deal, Bob Bailey, 18, a .475 hitter for Woodrow Wilson High in Long Beach, Calif., turned down 17 other clubs and sold himself to Pittsburgh. News stories said that the Pirates forked over $150,000 to $175,000, but the figure is probably closer to $100,000.

P: The Kansas City Athletics had to go to $125,000 to land Pennsylvania Schoolboy Lew Krausse Jr., 18, although his own father was scouting him for the A's. A week after he was signed, Lew shut out the Los Angeles Angels 4-0 on three hits, and last week he had a two-hit shutout going before the Boston Red Sox scored three runs in the seventh to beat him.

P: The New York Yankees topped their previous $75,000 bonus record, which went to a flop named Ed Cereghino, got Jake Gibbs for $100,000. In his first appearance with Richmond in the Triple-A International League, the former University of Mississippi third baseman booted his first grounder, struck out his first time up, then redeemed himself by hitting 5 for 7.

A Necessary Evil. While their money disappeared faster than office workers at the 5 p.m. bell, club officials grumbled--but futilely. "Sometimes I wonder how stupid we can be to pay those big bonuses," said Milwaukee General Manager John McHale just as his club was being milked of one-third of a million dollars by five hardheaded teen-age businessmen. "But I guess we're stuck with it until we can find a better system."

Many baseball officials agree that the bonus is a necessary evil. "The Yankees have run dry of prospects," said Manager Ralph Houk. "The only way we're going to get new ones is to buy them. We simply don't have any young kids."

This week, when the major league clubs hold their annual meeting in Chicago, the owners, their pockets all but emptied, will talk about ways to end, or at least reduce, the flow of bonus money. Said Commissioner Ford Frick: "This business is getting out of hand. It is wrong to give an untried man all that money." Almost any solution will come as a relief to beleaguered, scrambling scouts like ex-Yankee Pitcher Johnny Murphy, who recently approached one businesslike father to ask if his son might be interested in joining the New York Mets next year, was told brusquely: "Make your bid in writing. The price starts at $50,000."

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