March 25, 1979: Twins and MLB player contract news

The 1979 Horner holdout was unusual. He had just been drafted in June 1978, went straight to the majors, and won Rookie of the Year based on that half-season performance.

Braves blog Battery Power does a nice job of describing what happened next:

Quote

[Horner] quickly became embroiled in a bitter dispute as to whether or not the bonus he agreed to when he signed with the Braves should be considered his salary for the 1978 season (rather than the $21,000 league minimum the team believed it was paying him).

[Atlanta owner Ted] Turner offered Horner a contract for 1979 at $100,000, which if Horner’s rookie-year salary was $181,000 (as he and [agent Bucky] Woy believed) would be a larger pay cut than allowed by MLB’s collective bargaining agreement. After an arbitration panel eventually ruled in Horner’s favor, he agreed to a salary of more than $130,000 for 1979, which according to the New York Times was the largest ever given to a second-year player at the time.

They recap the rest of Horner's interesting career too.