From An Illustrated Guide to Income in the United States
Million-dollar salaries can be found in professional sports but some of the highest-earning players supplement their incomes with endorsement deals, e.g. Tiger Woods. However, looking at the history of Major League Baseball, we can see a dramatic increase in just the salaries of the highest-paid baseball players since the 1970s, although compared to CEOs or other celebrities their income looks more "modest".
Read Online to view all to the graphics from my book. These graphs were created using OmniGraphSketcher copied into Adobe Illustrator for additional annotations.
Data from
Freedman, Jonah. “The 50 Highest-Earning American Athletes: The Fortunate 50, 2010.” Sports Illustrated, Summer 2011. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/specials/fortunate50-2010/index.html.
———. “The 50 Highest-Earning American Athletes: The Fortunate 50, 2011.” Sports Illustrated, Summer 2011. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/specials/fortunate50-2011/index.html.
Haupert, Michael. “The Economic History of Major League Baseball.” EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. December 3, 2007. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haupert.mlb.
“2010 Baseball Team Payrolls.” About.com Baseball. July 6, 2012. http://baseball.about.com/od/newsrumors/a/2010baseballteampayrolls.htm.
USA Today. “USATODAY Salaries Databases.” July 5, 2012. http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/baseball/mlb/salaries/player/top-25/2010.
