Have you heard what Satchel Paige was paid?
In the archives at Notre Dame, in a financial ledger book that documents the Birmingham Black Barons from 1926 through 1930, there is an entry for a nineteen-year-old rookie pitcher named Leroy Paige. His salary in 1928 was eighty dollars per month.
That same year, the average Major League pitcher earned approximately $7,200 for the season. Across a five-month Negro Leagues season, Paige earned $400. Across a six-month MLB season, his white counterpart at the same position earned eighteen times more. This was not because the white pitcher was better. By every contemporary and modern measure, the white pitcher was not better.
The ledger is real. The math is simple. The comparison has been possible since the day the entries were recorded. This chapter makes the comparison for every documented Negro Leagues player, every documented season, and calculates what the gap cost in 2024 dollars. The total is not a metaphor. It is a number.
The Single Ledger Entry
The same five months. The same position. Two formats. The column on the right has always been calculable. The data existed. Nobody made the comparison.
| Date | Credit | Debit | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 1928 | $80.00 | $80.00 | |
| May 1928 | $80.00 | $160.00 | |
| Jun 1928 | $80.00 | $7.50 | $232.50 |
| (salary) (shoes) | |||
| Jul 1928 | $80.00 | $312.50 | |
| Aug 1928 | $80.00 | $5.00 | $387.50 |
| (salary) (fine) | |||
| Month | NL Salary | MLB Equiv | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| April | $80.00 | $600.00 | 7.5x |
| May | $80.00 | $600.00 | 7.5x |
| June | $80.00 | $600.00 | 7.5x |
| July | $80.00 | $600.00 | 7.5x |
| August | $80.00 | $600.00 | 7.5x |
| Season | $400.00 | $3,000.00 | 7.5x |
| Full Year | $400.00 | $7,200.00 | 18x |
| 2024 $ (CPI) | $7,312 | $131,616 | 18x |
The data existed. Nobody made the comparison.
The Aggregate Curve
Annual Negro Leagues payroll, MLB counterfactual payroll for the same players, and the gap between them. The shaded area is the documented wage theft, 1920 through 1948.
The Compounded Transfer
The wage gap was not a one-time event. Every dollar stolen continued to grow. If those wages had been paid and invested in the S&P 500, the compounded estate value for the top 50 Negro Leagues players would be worth nearly $14 billion in 2024. Not salary. Not inflation adjustment. Compounded wealth, denied across generations.
| # | Player | Pos | WAR | CPI Gap | Estate (2024$) | Multiplier |
|---|
Confidence: Modeled. Estate values compound the Bayesian wage gap estimate at historical S&P 500 total returns (Shiller series). The 90% credible interval propagates from the underlying wage gap model. Top 50 documented NLB players only.
The Individual Ledger
Career wage gap for every documented Negro Leagues player with sufficient service time. The top five are names you know. The next twenty are not. That is part of the argument.
| # | Player | Pos | WAR | NL Earned (2024$) | MLB Counter (2024$) | Gap (2024$) | Estate (2024$) | Conf |
|---|
The Team Ledger
Cumulative wage gap by franchise. The bars move the argument from individual to institutional. Every roster, every season, systematically underpaid.
The Sensitivity Dashboard
Every assumption is visible. Adjust any one and watch the headline figure move. The chapter does not hide behind a single number.
Method
Five models, each documented. Every assumption labeled at the point of claim. The methodology is the chapter's contribution. The number alone is contestable. The methodology with the number behind it is not.
- Birmingham Black Barons Ledger Book, 1926--1930. Joyce Sports Research Collection, Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame. Digitized via Marble.
- Larry Lester / SABR Negro Leagues Research Committee. Documented salary research including the $75 / $175 / $375 rookie / journeyman / star ranges for the 1920s.
- SABR Business of Baseball Research Committee historical salary data. MLB salary leaders since 1874, average and median MLB salaries.
- Seamheads Negro Leagues Database. Gary Ashwill and Kevin Johnson, lead researchers. Per-season WAR and production data.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI historical series. Measuring Worth historical wage index. BEA GDP deflator.
- Robert Shiller, S&P 500 monthly total return series, 1871 through 2024. Used for compounding calculations.
- Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (1970). Foundational secondary source for scattered salary references.
The WAR-plus-average-salary reparations framework was first publicly proposed by James M. Hayes in "The Rightness of Negro League Player Reparations," Institute of the Black World 21st Century, June 2020. This chapter operationalizes that framework at full scale with hierarchical Bayesian imputation, production-specific MLB counterfactuals, and confidence intervals. The debt to Hayes is foundational.
Coda
The ledger is a document. The gap is a calculation. The transfer is a fact. What you do with the number is a choice, but the number itself is no longer missing. It is here, documented, sourced, and reproducible from the data this chapter publishes under CC0.
The wages are one accounting. There is another.
The wages are one accounting. There is another. If every team had integrated in 1947, the gap would still be vast. But every team did not integrate in 1947. The last team waited twelve more years. The next chapter asks why, and which teams, and what the delay itself cost.