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PALGRAVE PIVOTS IN SPORTS ECONOMICS

Contract Options
for Buyers
y and
Sellers of Talent in
Professional Sports
Duane W Rockerbie
Stephen T. Easton
Palgrave Pivots in Sports Economics

Series Editors
Wladimir Andreff
Emeritus Professor
University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Paris, France

Andrew Zimbalist
Department of Economics
Smith College
Northampton, MA, USA
This mid-length monograph series invites contributions between 25,000–
50,000 words in length, and considers the economic analysis of
sports from all aspects, including but not limited to: the demand for
sports, broadcasting and media, sport and health, mega-events, sports
accounting, finance, betting and gambling, sponsorship, regional devel-
opment, governance, competitive balance, revenue sharing, player unions,
pricing and ticketing, regulation and anti-trust, and, globalization. Sports
Economics is a rapidly growing field and this series provides an exciting
new publication outlet enabling authors to generate reach and impact.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15189
 Duane W Rockerbie · Stephen T. Easton

Contract Options
for Buyers and Sellers
of Talent
in Professional Sports
Duane W Rockerbie Stephen T. Easton
Department of Economics Department of Economics
University of Lethbridge Simon Fraser University
Lethbridge, AB, Canada Burnaby, BC, Canada

ISSN 2662-6438 ISSN 2662-6446 (electronic)

Palgrave Pivots in Sports Economics
ISBN 978-3-030-49512-1 ISBN 978-3-030-49513-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49513-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
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names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

Sports economics is a relatively new field of research that is gaining popu-

larity and momentum. The authors of this book have produced research
and publications in the field for the last two decades, focusing mainly
on sports labor market issues and issues relating to sports league poli-
cies, such as revenue sharing, parity, and changes in rules of the game.
It has always been our purpose (and pleasure) to introduce models and
methods borrowed from other economic research fields, such as auction
models, models of multiple equilibria, consideration of talent conjectures,
exchange rate risk exposure, time series methods, and other innovations.
We do this to expand the sports economics literature and bring it to a
level of analysis consistent with other fields. This is an ambitious, and
sometimes challenging, endeavor but we strive to produce new research
that breaks new ground in sports economics that does not merely add to
the list of previously published results that are well-known and accepted.
Our purpose in this short book is to import another established
method from a field of economics outside of sports economics to attempt
to answer a problem. Professional athletes are paid large sums relative
to other professions, to play a game accessible to most children at a
much higher level that fans will pay to watch. Many publications exist
in sports economics that address the question of what financial compen-
sation a professional athlete should receive using profit-maximizing princi-
ples. However very few consider the issue of how players and team owners
actually bargain for salaries using the incentives and leverages available

v
vi PREFACE

to them. Instead, sports economists vaguely refer to “bargaining power”

when a player or a team owner gets the upper hand over salary nego-
tiations. Our motivation is provided by a relatively standard estimation
of marginal revenue product for baseball players that is well-known in
the sports economics literature. We find that certain groups of players
exhibit a consistent ability to exploit team owners, while other groups
have no ability to do so. Our “import” in this book is options theory as a
logical explanation for why some players are able to extract vast amounts
of money from owners, while others appear to be exploited. When one
thinks of the argument we make, it is clearly logical, however formal-
izing the argument into an economic model of a profit-maximizing team
owner is not so easy. The payoff is that we are able to provide insights
into the salary negotiation process that would not otherwise be possible
by developing a formal model. It is our hope that our contribution to this
literature is well-received and offers up an incentive for future research in
the field, perhaps in other professional sports than baseball.
We would like to thank Anthony Krautmann for specific comments
and encouragement, as well as the attendees of our NAASE session at
the 94th annual conference of the Western Economics Association in San
Francisco, June 2019.

Lethbridge, Canada Duane W Rockerbie

Burnaby, Canada Stephen T. Easton
May 2020
 Contents

1 On the Rise: Player Compensation and Multi-year

Contracts 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 A Brief History of Multi-year Contracts: Early Years
(1876–1975) 5
1.3 Early Years of Free Agency 11
1.4 Free Agency Since 2000 12
1.5 Multi-year Contracts in Basketball, Football,
and Hockey 13
1.6 Player Salaries and Marginal Revenue Products:
the Scully Method 16
1.7 Real Options 19
References 20

2 The Puzzle of Overpaid and Underpaid Players 23

2.1 Introduction 23
2.2 A Revenue Model 27
2.3 Estimates of the Revenue and Winning Percentage
Functions 32
2.4 Calculating a Player’s Net MRP 36
2.5 A Linear Probability Model 47
2.6 Summary 49
References 51

vii
viii CONTENTS

3 Contract Options for Buyers and Sellers of Talent 53

3.1 Introduction 53
3.2 Employment Contracts that Include Real Options 54
3.3 Setup of the Real Options Model 57
3.4 The Player’s European Put Option 60
3.5 The Owner’s European Put Option 64
References 66

4 Extensions to the Put Option Model 69

4.1 The Player’s Option Value in a Three-Year Contract 70
4.2 The Owner’s Option Value in a Three-Year Contract 74
4.3 Option Values with Different Career Profiles 75
4.4 Contract Values with Player and Owner Put Options 78
4.5 Multi-year Contracts with Option Years 81
4.6 No-Trade Clauses in Multi-year Contracts 82
References 83

5 Concluding Remarks 85
5.1 An Empirical Test 86
5.2 Extensions to the Real Options Model 89
References 91

Index 93
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 MLB average team payroll, average team revenue and
payroll share of revenue, 1980–2018 (Source https://sites.
google.com/site/rodswebpages/codes taken on December
20, 2019. These figures are taken from Financial World
and Forbes magazine) 2
Fig. 1.2 Monopsony model of talent acquisition (Source Author’s
creation) 17
Fig. 3.1 Possible states during the two-year player contract (Source
Author’s creation) 58
Fig. 3.2 Options available to the player after one season (Source
Author’s creation) 62
Fig. 4.1 Possible states during the three-year player contract (Source
Author’s creation) 70
Fig. 4.2 Possible paths for the player after two seasons (Source
Author’s creation) 72
Fig. 4.3 Player paths that give positive put option value for the
owner (Source Author’s creation) 75
Fig. 5.1 Scatter plot of surplus to team owner versus number of
years of player contract (Source Author’s creation) 87

ix
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Free-agent fielding players by playing position,

2000–2012 26
Table 2.2 Estimates of the (natural logarithm of the) revenue
function 29
Table 2.3 Estimates of the (natural logarithm of the) revenue
function (2.1) 34
Table 2.4 Estimates of the logistic winning percentage function in
(2.2) 36
Table 2.5 Estimated surpluses for MLB free agents, 2006–2012,
(η S = 2) 41
Table 2.6 Estimated surpluses for MLB free agents, 2000–2006,
(η S = 2) 42
Table 2.7 Exploitation rates for MLB free agents versus salary,
2000–2012, (η S = 2) 43
Table 2.8 Exploitation rates for MLB free agents versus salary,
2000–2012, (η S = ∞) 46
Table 2.9 Exploitation rates of free-agent players by contract
length, 2000–2012, (η S = 2) 47
Table 2.10 Exploitation rates for MLB free agents versus salary
using linear probability model, 2000–2012, (η S = 2) 49
Table 2.11 Exploitation rates of free-agent players by contract
length, 2000–2012, (η S = 2) 50
Table 5.1 Weighted least squares estimate of surplus model 88

xi
 CHAPTER 1

On the Rise: Player Compensation

and Multi-year Contracts

Abstract A salary anomaly has been identified in the sports economics

literature suggesting that some athletes are overpaid relative to their
marginal revenue product, while others are underpaid. The use of real
options theory answers this anomaly by tying the under or overpayment
of salaries to contract lengths. We begin this chapter with a brief history
of multi-year contracts in Major League Baseball and find that multi-year
contracts are much more prevalent after the repeal of the reserve clause
in 1976. The so-called Scully method to estimate a player’s marginal
revenue product is standard in the sports economics literature and we
review it here. We close the chapter by intuitively explaining how real
options theory explains the salary anomaly to motivate the rest of the
book.

Keywords Real options · Marginal product · Contract lengths · Baseball

1.1 Introduction
Since the beginning of the 1990 season, the date at which systematic
financial data for Major League Baseball teams became available, it has
been a boom time for the professional sport. Attendance at games has
increased from an average of 26,000 per game to over 28,000 and overall

© The Author(s) 2020 1

D. W. Rockerbie and S. T. Easton, Contract Options for Buyers
and Sellers of Talent in Professional Sports, Palgrave Pivots in Sports
Economics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49513-8_1
2 D. W. ROCKERBIE AND S. T. EASTON

350 0.8

300 0.7

0.6
250
0.5
$ millions

200
0.4
150
0.3
100
0.2
50 0.1

0 0
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018

Revenue Payroll Payroll/Revenue

Fig. 1.1 MLB average team payroll, average team revenue and payroll share
of revenue, 1980–2018 (Source https://sites.google.com/site/rodswebpages/
codes taken on December 20, 2019. These figures are taken from Financial
World and Forbes magazine)

league attendance has grown from 54.8 million to 68.5 million in 2019.1
Between 1990 and 2016 average revenue for clubs increased more than
sixfold, and even adjusting for inflation rose 550%. At the same time
payroll for the average major league club expanded even faster. From
1990 to 2016 the average payroll paid to players’ salaries rose by 800% in
real (inflation adjusted) terms.
Major League Baseball (MLB) finance has undergone considerable
change since the 1980s, most notably the rapid increase in salaries has
coincided with the even greater increase in revenues. Figure 1.1 plots
the average team payroll from 1980 to 2018, the average team revenue
from 1990 to 2018, and the payroll share of team revenue.2 The average
annual rate of increase of average team payroll is 28.4%. The average team

1 https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/misc.shtml taken March 27,

2020.
2 Source: https://sites.google.com/site/rodswebpages/codes taken on December 20,
2019. These figures are taken from Financial World and Forbes magazine.
 1 ON THE RISE: PLAYER COMPENSATION AND MULTI-YEAR CONTRACTS 3

payroll increased from $17.3 million in 1990 (39% of total expenses) to

$154.7 million in 2019 (53.3% of total expenses).3 Average team revenue
increased from $51.5 million in 1990 to $329.8 million in 2018. The
payroll share of team revenue increased from 27.6% in 1990 to 32.6% in
2018, however this is still well below the 50% payroll share of revenue
in the salary cap systems used in the National Football League (NFL),
National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Hockey League
(NHL).4 Gate revenue’s share of total revenue has decreased from an
average of 33.3% in 1990 to 28.7% in 2019. The salary shares presented
in Fig. 1.1 are underestimates of the true figures as a number of excluded
payroll categories are difficult to measure (Zimbalist 2011). Some of these
include deferred salary payments, signing bonuses, non-roster players,
player benefits, minor league payrolls, and whether the payroll is measured
at the start of the season, mid-season, or end of the season. It is also
not clear what revenues should be included in reported revenues and to
what extent these are related to baseball operations. For instance, lands
adjacent to ballparks that are owned by the team owner that generate
annual revenue, and would not otherwise generate revenue if not for
the operation of the team in the adjoining stadium, are not included in
baseball-related income (BRI). We rely on Forbes estimates throughout
this book, but we acknowledge the possible errors in their calculations.
Team values have increased from a median value of $102.5 million in
1990 to $1.58 billion in 2019, yielding an average annual growth rate
of 48.0% (without compounding). New expansion clubs have appeared
in Miami, Tampa Bay, Denver, Phoenix, and one club relocated from
Montreal to Washington, DC. A new, more extensive revenue sharing
system was adopted in 2002 that is even more extensive today, and in the
late 1990s a competitive balance tax on payrolls above a given threshold
level was phased in. Increased attendance resulted in the construction
of 21 new ballparks at a total estimated cost to clubs and taxpayers of
$7.8 billion.5 Even after general inflation (the all items Consumer Price

3 Source: https://sites.google.com/site/rodswebpages/codestaken on December 20,

2019. These figures are taken from Financial World and Forbes magazine.
4 1994 is an exception as the baseball lockout shortened season inflated the share going
to players.
5 Source: http://www.ballparks.com/ taken on February 8, 2017.
4 D. W. ROCKERBIE AND S. T. EASTON

Index increased by 85.6% between 1990 and 2016), MLB operates on a

much larger dollar scale that it did in the 1980s.6
The impressive growth in player salaries in MLB begs the question of
whether players are being paid what they are worth. Economics suggests
that player salaries are proportional to the revenue a player generates for
the team owner, more specifically, the player’s marginal revenue product
(MRP). Players do not generate revenue directly for their owners, rather
their talent contributes to a team production function that generates
winning results. These wins then translate into a greater demand for
the team’s product (tickets, television and media subscriptions, etc.) that
result in greater revenue for the owner. The owner pays the player for
his skills on the field and keeps a share of the revenue generated by these
skills: what we term the surplus from talent. Owners and players deter-
mine the relative shares when negotiating salary contracts in MLB. Player
salaries in the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Asso-
ciation (NBA), and National Hockey League (NHL) have definite ceilings
due to salary caps agreed to in their collective bargaining agreements
(CBAs), however MLB has no salary caps, so players are better able to
capture the full value of their MRPs.
Our task in this monograph is to suggest an answer to the apparent
anomaly in MLB that many players are paid well above the MRPs. This
evidence is supported by a number of studies that we discuss later. An
early study by Scully (1974) found convincing evidence that players were
paid well below their MRPs in the reserve clause period (defined in the
next section). This is understandable since the reserve clause prevented
the movement of players to new teams by limiting free agency. The stan-
dard monopsony model of industry structure predicts that the wage rate
paid to players will be well below their MRPs when there is only a single
buyer of talent. We do not refute Scully’s results. However, subsequent
analyses using more recent salary and performance data after the aboli-
tion of the reserve clause suggest that the situation has become reversed
for many players, but in particular, for highly talented players. One can
justify this anomaly by pointing to the greatly increased bargaining power
of these players after the fall of the reserve clause, however it is not clear
what this bargaining power actually is.

6 Source: http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Consumer_Price_Index/ taken on

February 8, 2017.
 1 ON THE RISE: PLAYER COMPENSATION AND MULTI-YEAR CONTRACTS 5

We attempt to clarify the process of bargaining by introducing the

concept of real options. A player and an owner who wish to agree on
a multi-year contract each give up valuable options in comparison to a
series of one-year contracts. Players give up the option to move to another
team if more attractive ones become available. Owners give up the option
to leave the player un-signed in future years if the player’s performance
diminishes and his MRP falls. Salary negotiations then involve each party
placing values on these options and agreeing on their net value. If the net
value favors the player, such as a younger player moving into the prime
of his career, the player will demand and receive a salary greater than
his expected MRP. If the net value favors the owner, such as an older
player whose skills and MRP could diminish, the owner will demand and
pay a salary less than the player’s expected MRP. Hence our explanation
for the apparent salary–MRP anomalies in multi-year contracts. In single-
year contracts, the player and owner do not have options of any value, so
players should be paid a salary equal to their expected MRP.
The remainder of this chapter provides brief histories of salaries and
multi-year contracts of more notable players, and a brief review of the
Scully (1974) approach to estimating MRPs that is essential to finding
evidence for the real options approach. We develop a technique to esti-
mate free-agent player MRPs and estimate them in Chapter 2. Our
findings confirm the salary–MRP anomaly for a recent sample period and
motivate the real options model that follows in Chapter 3. Chapter 4
provides extensions to the real options model and Chapter 5 provides
concluding remarks.

1.2 A Brief History of Multi-year

Contracts: Early Years (1876–1975)
The history of the labor market in MLB can be divided into three distinct
periods that progressed from a system of indentured servitude for players
to the lucrative market that exists today in which players have tremendous
bargaining power. These divisions mark a century and a half of contract
history: the reserve clause period from 1876 to 1975, the early years of
free agency from 1976 to 2000, and the years since 2001 when television
and media rights fees exploded.
The first period of contract history spanned almost a century. The
inception of the National League (NL) of Baseball in 1876 created a
closed league with only eight teams operating in some of the largest cities
6 D. W. ROCKERBIE AND S. T. EASTON

in the eastern United States. Amateur leagues quickly dissolved as a conse-

quence of the higher quality of baseball played in the NL. Players in the
NL were full-time employees during the playing season, meaning they did
not need to hold other jobs to earn a living, and they could devote their
time to honing their baseball skills. The NL also saw bargaining power
for salaries transferred from the players to the owners with the inclusion
of a reserve clause in the standard playing contract (fully implemented
in 1879) and a salary cap of $2000 when annual earnings of non-farm
employees was $403.7 . The reserve clause generally stated that if a player
and an owner could not agree on a salary for the coming MLB season,
the owner had the right to “reserve” the player at the salary paid in the
season just ended. The owner could then invoke the reserve clause at the
end of each season that the owner wished to retain the player, effectively
tying the player to one team for the length of his playing career. If the
owner chose not to retain the player’s services, the player was a free agent
able to sign a contract with any team that would have him.
Contracts were for only a single season in the early years of base-
ball—multi-year contracts were unheard of—however, the players did not
complain as most were happy to earn a good living playing baseball. A
player would receive his contract in the mail at the end of the playing
season, sign it, and mail it back to the team owner without question.
Players were not represented by agents, instead contract negotiations were
conducted between the player and the team owner, as owners refused
to negotiate with player agents. Team owners were allowed to release a
player from his contract at any time during the playing season in exchange
for a small compensation payment. Thus players had very little job secu-
rity. Cash sales of players were allowed as well with the player receiving
none of the proceeds. In this way, team owners kept the surplus value of
the player’s services among themselves. Connie Mack used this strategy
twice during his tenure with the Philadelphia Athletics (now operating
in Oakland) during years in which his team struggled financially. Mack
sold many players during the 1914–1916 seasons, the most notable of
which were Eddie Collins, sold for $50,000 to the Chicago White Sox

7 Table Ba4280-4282 in Historical statistics of the United States, earliest times to the
present: Millennial edition, edited by Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael
R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ISBN-9780511132971.Ba4214-454
410.1017/ISBN-9780511132971.Ba4214-4544.
 1 ON THE RISE: PLAYER COMPENSATION AND MULTI-YEAR CONTRACTS 7

in 1914, and Home Run Baker, sold to the New York Yankees in 1916
for $37,500. Even a World Series appearance in 1931 could not keep the
team afloat, subsequently, Mack sold Mickey Cochrane for $100,000 to
the Detroit Tigers, Lefty Grove for $125,000 to the Boston Red Sox,
and Al Simmons, Jimmy Dykes and Mule Haas to the Chicago White
Sox for $100,000. These cash sales effectively moved the Athletics out of
contention by the 1934 season.
The reserve clause effectively eliminated the need for multi-year
contracts, even for the best players. However, there were a few excep-
tions. Data on player contracts is sparse for the early years of baseball all
the way up to the 1960s, and generally, the data that are available are
for the star players. Ty Cobb negotiated a three-year contract with the
Detroit Tigers in 1910 for an annual salary of $9000, significantly more
than the average player salary of $3000. Cobb did not report to spring
training for the 1913 season and missed a number of games while holding
out but received a one-year contract for what is thought to have been the
first five-figure salary in MLB history ($12,000). He negotiated a two-
year contract with Detroit in 1914 for annual salaries of $15,000 and
$20,000, and inked multi-year contracts thereafter until becoming the
player-manager of the Tigers in 1921. Cobb was arguably the top player in
MLB over the 1910–1920 seasons, achieving a weight-average8 batting,
on-base percentage and slugging percentage (weighted by at bats) of
0.382, 0.453, and 0.462, respectively, and was the American League (AL)
MVP in 1911.9 Cobb led the AL in batting average in nine of those
seasons and led in total hits in five. After being released by the Tigers
in 1927, Cobb signed a one-year contract for an MLB record salary of
$85,000 with the Philadelphia Athletics.10 His investments in real estate
and the stock market made Cobb a very wealthy man, far beyond his
wealth from baseball.
Yankee Stadium is still known as the “house that Ruth built,” despite
not being the original stadium in which Ruth played. That “house” was in
the Bronx, built in 1923, renovated in 1976, and closed in 2008. Ruth’s
legacy lives on through his amazing playing statistics and his financial

8 Each season’s batting average weighted by the number of at bats to form an overall
batting average for the period.
9 All playing statistics hereafter taken from http://www.baseball-reference.com.
10 To put this salary in perspective, the Dodger’s great Sandy Koufax earned the same
salary in his 1965 season, some 38 years after Cobb’s.
8 D. W. ROCKERBIE AND S. T. EASTON

rewards. Ruth signed a string of one-year contracts with the Boston Red
Sox and New York Yankees up to the 1922 season, at which point he
negotiated a three-year contract at $52,000 per year (40% of the Yankee’s
team payroll). A two-year contract followed in the 1925 season for the
same salary, followed by a three-year contract in the 1927 season for
$70,000 per season. Ruth played another four seasons for the Yankees,
each a one-year contract, until he retired. Ruth’s playing statistics over
the 1922–1930 seasons are phenomenal: a weight-average batting, on-
base percentage, and slugging percentage (weighted by at bats) of 0.351,
0.479, and 0.714, respectively, His season average of 46 home runs would
be impressive today, however Ruth played when the playing rules dictated
that hits that cleared the fences but curve outside the foul pole did
not count as home runs. He earned AL MVP honors in 1923 and the
Yankees won three World Series championships (appearing in six) over
1922–1930.
At the time of Babe Ruth, the Yankees “murderer’s row” lineup also
included Lou Gehrig. Over the 1926–1937 seasons, Gehrig averaged 37
home runs per season (weighted by each season’s at bats) and featured
a weight-average batting, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage
of 0.348, 0.457, and 0.651, respectively. He was AL MVP in 1927 and
1936 and won World Series titles in four of these seasons. Gehrig was
truly the ironman of MLB in his playing days, playing in almost every
regular season game. Despite these statistical accolades that are, in many
ways, comparable to Ruth, Gehrig was paid far less than Ruth and only
once negotiated a multi-year contract—a three-year deal in 1928 paying
him $25,000 per season. This was a significant increase in salary compared
to the $8000 he was paid in the 1927 season. Gehrig’s annual salary was
consistently in the $25,000–$30,000 range over much of his career with
the Yankees, suggesting he was severely underpaid.
Jimmie Foxx began his playing career with the Philadelphia Athletics
in 1925 and quickly established himself as one of the elite players in base-
ball. Foxx batted 0.354 in 1929, slugged 33 home runs and contributed
118 runs batted in (RBI). He was rewarded with a three-year contract
paying a total of $50,000 by Connie Mack, manager, treasurer, and part
owner of the Athletics. The team won World Series championships in
1929 and 1930 and Foxx won MVP titles in 1932, 1933, and 1938.
His career statistics compare very favorably to Cobb, Ruth, and Gehrig
in many respects, yet his annual salary averaged far less, likely due to the
financial difficulties constantly plaguing Mack and the Athletics.
 1 ON THE RISE: PLAYER COMPENSATION AND MULTI-YEAR CONTRACTS 9

Many other star players toiled in the major leagues until the 1960s,
perhaps most notably Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Willie Mays.
DiMaggio (the “Yankee Clipper”) played for the New York Yankees for
the 1936–1942 and 1946–1951 seasons, with three years of military
service during World War II. Although an excellent player throughout
his career, DiMaggio’s prewar statistics are impressive: a 0.339 batting
average (weighted by at bats), 0.403 on-base percentage, and 0.606 slug-
ging average, earning MVP titles in 1939 and 1941.11 In salary history,
DiMaggio is best known as the first six-figure player in MLB history,
earning $100,000 for the 1949 and 1950 seasons. He is also known
for holding out at the start of the 1939 season, demanding a one-year
contract at $40,000 when the Yankees offered $25,000. With nowhere
else to play, DiMaggio accepted the Yankees offer with Yankees owner,
Colonel Jacob Ruppert, quipping “I hope the young man has learned his
lesson.”12 Despite having an outstanding career and being a tough nego-
tiator, DiMaggio never negotiated a multi-year contract. Ted Williams is
generally thought to be the highest paid player in MLB during 1951 to
1960 seasons, consistently earning $100,000 or more per season. One of
the greatest hitters to have ever played, Williams played his entire career
with the Boston Red Sox and negotiated a number of short multi-year
contracts toward the end of his career. Beginning in 1951, Willie Mays
played his entire 22-year career with the New York/San Francisco Giants,
winning MVP honors in the 1954 and 1965 seasons. Mays 0.345 batting
average and 41 home runs helped power the Giants to a World Series title
in 1954, but the team achieved few other successes during his lengthy
playing career. In his best season (1954), Mays earned $12,500 and was
severely underpaid afterward with a series of one-year contracts. A three-
year contract was agreed in 1966 that paid Mays $105,000 per season.
This contract set the standard for the famous dual contract hold outs
of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale in 1966. Believing that they could
negotiate more effectively as a pair, Koufax and Drysdale demanded three-
year contracts totaling $500,000 each, but ultimately capitulated to the

11 In 1941 DiMaggio also hit in 56 straight games, a record that still stands.
12 D. Gaffney, “DiMaggio’s contract hold-out”. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americane
xperience/features/dimaggio-contract-hold-out/.
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The black haired woman behind the desk nodded and reached for a
big notebook. Flip noticed that she had quite a dark moustache on
her upper lip. "How do you do? I am Miss Tulip, the matron," she
said as she began leafing through the ledger. "Hartung, Havre,
Hesse, Hunter. Ah, yes, Phillipa Hunter, number 97, room 33." She
looked up from the book and her black eyes searched the girls
milling about in the big hall. "Erna Weber," she called.
A girl about Flip's age detached herself from a cluster and came over
to the desk. "Yes, Miss Tulip?"
"This is Philippa Hunter," Miss Tulip said. "She is in your dormitory.
Take her upstairs with you and show her where to put her things.
She is number 97."
"Yes, Miss Tulip." Erna reached down for Flip's suitcase and a lock of
fair hair escaped from her barette and fell over one eye. She pushed
it back impatiently. "Come on," she told Flip.
Flip looked despairingly at her father but all he did was to grin
encouragingly. She followed Erna reluctantly.
At the head of the stairs Erna set down the suitcase and undid her
barette, yanking her short hair back tightly from her face. "Sprechen
sie deutsch?" she asked Flip.
Flip knew just enough German to answer, "Nein."
"Parlez vous Français?" Erna asked, picking up the suitcase again.
To this Flip was able to answer "Oui."
"Well, that's something at any rate," Erna told her in French, climbing
another flight of marble stairs. "After Prayers tonight we aren't
supposed to speak anything but French. Some of the girls don't
speak any French when they first come and I can tell you they have
an awful time. I ought to know because I didn't speak any French
when I came last year. What did Tulip say your name was?"
"Philippa Hunter."
"What are you? English?"
"No. American."
Erna turned down a corridor, pushed open a white door marked 33,
and set the suitcase inside. Flip looked around a sunny room with
flowered wall-paper and four brass beds. Four white bureaus beside
the beds and four white chairs at the feet completed the furnishings.
Wide French windows opened onto a balcony from which Flip could
see the promised view of the lake and the mountains. Each chair
had a number painted on it in small blue letters. Erna picked up the
suitcase again and dumped it down on the chair marked 97.
"That's you," she said. "You'd better remember your number. We do
everything by numbers. That was Miss Tulip at the desk; she's the
matron and she lives on this floor. We call her Black and Midnight.
She's a regular old devil about giving Order Marks. If one corner of
the bed isn't tucked in just so or if you don't straighten it the minute
you get off it or if a shirt is even crooked in a drawer old Black and
Midnight gives you an Order Mark. So watch out for her. Have you
got any skis?"
Flip nodded. "They were sent on with my trunk."
"Oh. They'll be in the Ski Room, then. Rack 97. Your hook in the
Cloak Room will be 97, too." Erna pulled open one of the drawers in
Flip's bureau. "I see you sent your trunk in time. Black and Midnight's
unpacked for you."
"That was nice of her," Flip said.
"Nice? Don't be a child. They unpack for us to make sure there isn't
any candy or money or food in the trunks, or books we aren't
supposed to read, or lipstick or cigarettes. Have you got anything to
eat in your suitcase?"
Flip shook her whirling head.
"Oh, well, you'll learn," Erna said. "Come on. I'll find your cubicle in
the bathroom for you and we'll see what your bath nights are. Then
I'll take you back down to Miss Tulip. I suppose you want to say
good-bye to your mother and father."
Flip started to explain that Eunice wasn't her mother, but Erna was
already dragging her down the hall. "Himmel, you're slow," Erna said.
"Hurry up."
Flip tried to stumble along faster with her long legs. Her legs were
very long and straight and skinny, but sometimes it seemed as
though she must be bow-legged, knock-kneed and pigeon-toed all at
once, the way she always managed to stumble and trip herself up.
Erna pushed open a heavy door. Down one side of the wall were
rows and rows of small cubicles, each marked with a number. Each
had a shelf for toothbrush, mug, and soap, and hooks underneath for
towels. On the opposite wall were twelve cubicles each with a wash
basin, and a curtain to afford a measure of privacy. "The johns are
next door," Erna said. "Here's the bath list. Let's see. You're eight
forty five Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. That's my time, too. We
can bang on the partition. Once Black and Midnight found a girl
crawling under the partition and she was expelled."
Erna's French was fluent, with just a trace of German in it. Flip had
learned to speak excellent French that summer in Paris so she had
no difficulty in following it, though she, herself, had nothing to say.
But Erna seemed to be perfectly happy dominating the conversation.
"Come on," Erna said. "I'll take you downstairs, and you can say
good-bye to your parents. I want to see if Jackie's come in from
Paris yet. She's one of our roommates. This is her third year here."
"Jackie what?" Flip asked, for something to say.
"Jacqueline Bernstein. Her father directs movies. Last year he came
over to see Jackie and he brought a movie projector with him and we
all had movies in Assembly Hall. It was wonderful."
They had reached the big entry hall now and Flip looked around but
could not see either her father or Eunice, and at this point even
Eunice would have been a welcome face. Erna led her up to the
concierge's desk where Miss Tulip still presided.
"Well, Erna, what is it now?" the matron asked.
"Please, Miss Tulip," Erna said, her hands clasped meekly in front of
her. "You said I was to show this new girl our room and everything,
so I did."
Miss Tulip looked at Erna, then at Flip, then at her note book. "Oh,
yes. Philippa Hunter, number 97. Please take her to Mlle. Dragonet,
Erna. Her father is waiting there for her."
"Come on," Erna told Flip impatiently.
Mlle. Dragonet's rooms were at the end of the long corridor on the
second floor and were shut off from the rest of the school by heavy
sliding doors. These were open now and Erna pulled Flip into a small
hall with two doors on each side. She pointed a solemn finger at the
first door on the right. "This is the Dragon's study," she said. "Look
out any time you're sent there. It means you're in for it." Then she
pointed to the second door. "This one's her living room and that's not
so bad. If you're sent to the living room you're not going to get a
lecture, anyhow, though the less I see of the Dragon the happier I
am."
"Is she?" Flip asked.
"Is she what?"
"A dragon."
"Old Dragonet? Oh, she's all right. Kind of standoffish. Doesn't
fraternize much, if you know what I mean. But she's all right. Well,
I've got to leave you now, but I'll see you later. You just knock."
And Flip was left standing in the empty corridor in front of the
Dragon's door. She gave a final despairing glance at Erna's blue skirt
disappearing around the curve of the stairs. Then she lifted her hand
to knock because if her father was in there she didn't know how else
to get to him. Besides, she didn't know what else to do. Erna had
deserted her, and she would never have the courage to go back to
the big crowded lounge or to try to find her room again, all alone.
She tapped very gently, so gently that there was no response. She
hugged herself in lonely misery.—Oh, please, she thought,—please,
God, make me not be such a coward. It's awful to be such a coward.
Mother always laughed at me and scolded me because I was such a
coward. Please give me some gumption, quick, God, please.
Then she raised her hand and knocked. Mlle. Dragonet's voice
called, "Come in."
 4
The rest of the day had the strange turbulent, uncontrolled quality
of a dream. She said good-bye to her father and Eunice in Mlle.
Dragonet's office, and then she was swept along in a stream of girls
through registration, signing for courses, dinner, prayers, a meeting
of the new girls in the common room ... she thought that now she
knew what the most unimportant little fish in a school of fishes must
feel like caught in the current of a wild river. She sat that night, on
her bed, her long legs looking longer than ever in peppermint candy
striped pajamas, and watched her roommates. On the bureau beside
the bed she had the package her father had left her as a going away
present: sketching pads of various sizes, and a box of Eberhard
Faber drawing pencils. There was also a bottle of Chanel No. 5 from
Eunice which she had pushed aside.
"You'll have to take those downstairs tomorrow morning," Erna told
her. "We aren't allowed things like that in our rooms. You can put it in
your locker in the Common Room or on your shelf in the Class
Room. They'll be marked with your number."
Flip felt that if she heard anything else about her number she would
scream. She was accustomed to being a person, not a number; and
she didn't feel like number 97 at all. But she just said, "Oh."
Jacqueline Bernstein, the other old girl in the room, pulled blue silk
pajamas over her head and laughed. Flip had noticed that she
laughed a great deal, not a giggle, but a nice laugh that bubbled out
of her at the slightest excuse like a small fountain. She was a very
pretty girl with curly black hair that fell to her shoulders and was held
back from her face with a blue ribbon the color of her uniform; and
she had big black eyes with long curly lashes. Her body had filled out
into far more rounded and mature lines than Flip's. "Remember
when old Black and Midnight caught me using cold cream last
winter?" she asked Erna. "She'll let you use all kinds of guk like
mentholatum on your face to keep from getting chapped, but not cold
cream because it's make-up."
Flip looked at her enviously, thinking disparagingly of her own sand-
colored hair, and her eyes that were neither blue nor grey and her
body as long and skinny as a string bean.—That's just it, she
thought.—I look like a string bean and Jacqueline Bernstein looks
like somebody who's going to be a movie star and Erna looks like
somebody who always gets chosen first when people choose teams.
She hoped her grandmother was right when she said she would
grow up to be a beauty; but when she looked at Jackie, Flip doubted
it.
The door opened and Gloria Browne, the other roommate, came in.
She was English, with ginger-colored permanent-waved hair. Erna
had somehow discovered and informed Flip and Jackie that Gloria's
parents were tremendously wealthy and she had come to school
with four brand new trunks full of clothes and had two dozen of
everything, even toothbrushes. "Esmée Bodet says Gloria's nouveau
riche," Erna added. "Her father owns a brewery and an uncle in
Canada or someplace sent her the clothes because she didn't have
the coupons."
"Esmée always finds out everything about everybody," Jackie had
said. "I don't know how she does it. She's an awful snoop."
Now Gloria walked to her bureau and took up her comb and started
combing out her tangles.
"Use a brush," Erna suggested.
"Oh, I never use a brush, ducky," Gloria said. "It's bad for a
permanent."
Jackie laughed. "That's silly."
"Your hair's natural, isn't it?" Gloria asked.
"But yes."
"Have you ever had a permanent?"
"No."
"Then don't say its silly. If you brush a permanent all the wave comes
out."
Jackie laughed again and got into bed. "Well, at least you speak
French," she said. "At least we won't have to go through that struggle
with you."
"Oh, I went to a French school in Vevey before the war." Gloria gave
up on her tangles. "This is my fifth boarding school. I started when I
was six."
"How are you at hockey?" Erna asked.
Gloria shrugged and said, "Oh, not too bad," in a way that made Flip
know she was probably very good indeed.
"How about you, Philippa?" Erna asked.
Flip admitted, "I'm not very good. I fall over my feet."
"How about skiing?"
Gloria pulled a nightgown made of pink satin and ecru lace over her
head. "I just dote on skiing. We spent last Christmas hols at St.
Moritz."
"I've never skied," Flip said, "but everybody says I'm going to love it."
Erna looked at Gloria's nightgown. "If you think Black and Midnight's
going to let you wear that creation you're crazy."
Jackie looked at it longingly. "It's divine. It's absolutely divine."
Gloria giggled. "Oh, I know they won't let me wear it. I just thought I'd
wait till they made me take it off. Emile gave it to me for a going
away present."
"Who's Emile?" Erna asked.
"My mother's fiancé. He's a Count."
"A Count—pfft!" Jackie laughed.
"He is, too. And he has lots of money, which most Counts don't,
nowadays."
"Your mother's what?" Erna asked.
"Her fiancé. You know. The man she's going to marry. Emile is a
card. And he gives me wonderful presents. And then Daddy gives
me presents so I won't like Emile better than I do him. It really works
out very well. I'm just crazy about Emile. Daddy likes him, too."
"Your father!" Jackie squeaked.
"Oh, yes. Mummy and Daddy are still great friends. Mummy says it's
the way civilized people behave. She and Daddy both hate scenes.
Me, too."
"But don't you just feel awful about it?" Erna asked.
"Awful? Why? I don't expect it'll make much difference to me. I'll
spend the summer hols with Mummy one year and with Daddy the
next, and as soon as I'm out of school I expect I'll get married myself
unless I decide to have a career. I might get Emile to give me a
dress shop in London or Paris. I expect he would and I adore being
around pretty frocks and things. Isn't it a bore we have to wear
beastly old uniforms here? We didn't have uniforms at my last school
but there were vile ones the school before."
A bell rang, blaring so loudly that Flip almost fell off the bed. She
didn't think she'd ever be able to hear that bell without jumping. It
rang for all the classes, Erna had told her, and in the evenings it rang
at half hour intervals, announcing the times at which the different
age-groups were to put out their lights. For meals one of the maids
got in the elevator with a big gong and rode up and down, up and
down, beating the gong. Flip liked the gong; it had a beautiful,
resonant tone and long after the maid had stopped beating it and left
the elevator, you could hear the waves of rich sound still throbbing
through the building, and with closed eyes you could almost pretend
it was a jungle instead of a school.
"That's our bell," Erna said. "Black and Midnight comes in to put out
the light. That's one trouble with being on this floor. She gets to us so
soon."
As she finished speaking the door was opened abruptly and Miss
Tulip stood looking in at them. She had changed to her white
matron's uniform. "Everybody ready?" she asked.
Erna and Jackie chorussed, "Yes, Miss Tulip, thank you, Miss Tulip."
Then Miss Tulip spotted Gloria's nightgown. "Really!" she exclaimed.
"Gloria Browne, isn't it?"
Gloria echoed Erna and Jackie. "Yes, Miss Tulip, thank you, Miss
Tulip."
"That nightgown is most unsuitable," Miss Tulip said disapprovingly.
"I trust you have something else more appropriate."
"That depends on what you call appropriate, please, Miss Tulip,"
Gloria said.
"I will go over your things tomorrow. Report to me after breakfast."
"Yes, Miss Tulip," Gloria said meekly, and winked at Erna.
"Good night, girls. Remember, no talking." And Miss Tulip switched
out the light.
Flip lay there in the dark. As her eyes became accustomed to the
night she noticed that the lights from the terrace below shone up
through the iron railing of the balcony and lay in a delicate pattern on
the ceiling. She raised herself on one elbow and she could see out of
the window. All down the mountainside to the lake the lights of the
villages lay like fallen stars. As she watched, one would flicker out
here, another there. Through the open window she could hear the
chime of a village church, and then, almost like an echo, the bell
from another church and then another. She began to feel the sense
of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold
of her and made her forget her fears. Now she saw the lights of the
train as it crawled up the mountain, looking like a little luminous
dragon. And on the lake was a tiny band of lights from one of the
lake boats.
—Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! she thought. Then she began to
long for her father to show the beauty to. She couldn't contain so
much beauty just in herself. It had to be shared, and she couldn't
whisper to the girls in her room to come and look. She couldn't cry,
"Oh, Erna, Jackie, Gloria, come look!" Erna and Jackie must know
how beautiful it was, and somehow Flip thought that Gloria would
think looking at views was stupid.—Father, she thought.—Oh,
Father. What's the matter with me. What is it?
Then she realized. Of course. She was homesick. Every bone in her
ached with homesickness as though she were getting 'flu. Only she
wasn't homesick for a place, but for a person, for her father. How
many months, how many weeks, how many days, hours, minutes,
seconds, till Christmas?
5
She sat in the warm tub on her first bath night and longing for her
father overflowed her again and she wept. Miss Tulip entered briskly
without knocking.
"Homesick, Philippa?" she asked cheerfully. "I expect you are. We all
are at first. But you'll get over it. We all do. But you mustn't cry, you
know! It doesn't help. Not a bit. Sportsmanship, remember."
Flip nodded and watched the water as it lapped about her thin
knees.
"Almost through?"
"Yes."
"Yes, Miss Tulip," the matron corrected her.
"Yes, Miss Tulip," Flip echoed obediently.
"Well, hurry up, then. Its almost time for the next girl. Mustn't get a
Tardy Mark by taking more than your fifteen minutes."
"I'll hurry," Flip said.
"Washed behind your ears?"
"Yes." Flip was outraged that Miss Tulip should ask her such a
baby's question. But Miss Tulip with another brisk nod bounced out
as cheerfully as she had entered. Flip stepped out of the tub and
started to dry herself.
6
They were supposed to start hockey but it rained and Flip's class
had relay races in the big gym at the other end of the playing fields
from the school. The gym had once been the hotel garage but now it
was full of bars and rings and leather horses and an indoor basket
ball court where the class above Flip's was playing. Erna and a
Norwegian girl, Solvei Krogstad, were captains. Erna chose Jackie,
then dutifully chose Gloria and Flip. It was to be a simple relay race.
The girls were to run with a small stick to the foot of the gym and
back, putting the stick into the hand of the next girl. Flip was fifth in
line, following Gloria.
Gloria ran like a streak of lightning. Sally Buckman, the girl behind
Flip, was jumping up and down, shrieking, "Keep it up, Glory! Oh,
Glory, swell!" She looked like a very excited pug dog.
Gloria snapped the stick smartly into Flip's fingers but Flip fumbled
and dropped it. Sally groaned. Flip picked up the stick and started to
run. She ran as fast as she could. But her knee seemed stiffer than it
ever had before and her legs were so long that she had no control of
them and her feet kept getting in their own way. She heard the girls
screaming, "Run, Philippa, run, can't you!" Now she had reached the
end of the gym and she turned around and started the long way back
to Sally Buckman. The girls were jumping up and down in agony and
their shouts were angry and despairing. "Oh, Philippa! Oh, Philippa,
run!"
Panting, her throat dry and aching, she thrust the stick into Sally's
hand, and limped to the back of the line.
After gym she locked herself in the bathroom and read again the
letter from her father which had come in the morning's mail. It was a
gay, funny letter, full of little sketches. She answered it during study
hall, hoping that the teacher in charge would not notice. She drew
him a funny picture of Miss Tulip, and little sketches of her
roommates and some of the other girls. She told him that the food
wasn't very good. Too many boiled potatoes. And the bread was
doughy and you could almost use it for modelling clay. But maybe it
would help her get fat. She did not tell him that she was homesick
and miserable. She could not make him unhappy by letting him know
what a terrible coward she was. She looked around at the other girls
in the study hall, Sally chewing her pencil, Esmée twisting a strand of
hair around and around her finger, Gloria muttering Latin verbs under
her breath.
Gloria had whispered to her that the teacher taking Study Hall was
the Art teacher. Her name was Madame Perceval, and she was Mlle.
Dragonet's niece. The girls called her Percy, and although she had a
reputation for being strict, she was very popular. Flip stared at her
surreptitiously, hoping that she wouldn't be as dull and
unsympathetic as the art teacher in her school in New York. She had
finished her lessons early and now that she had written her letter to
her father she did not know what to do. She thought that Madame
Perceval looked younger and somehow more alive than the other
teachers. "I wonder where her husband is?" Gloria had whispered.
"Jackie says nobody knows, not even Esmée. She says everybody
thinks there's some sort of mystery about Percy. I say, isn't it
glamorous! I can't wait for the first Art lesson."
Madame Perceval had thick brown hair, the color of well-polished
mahogany. It was curly and quite short and brushed back carelessly
from her face. Her skin was burnished, as though she spent a great
deal of time out of doors, and her eyes were grey with golden
specks. Flip noticed that Study Hall tonight was much quieter than it
had been the other nights with other teachers in charge.
She reached for a pencil to make a sketch of Madame Perceval to
put in the letter to her father, and knocked her history book off the
corner of her desk. It fell with a bang and she felt everybody's eyes
on her. She bent down to pick it up. When she put it back on her
desk she looked at Madame Perceval, but the teacher was writing
quietly in a note book. Flip sighed and looked around. There was no
clock in Study Hall and she wondered how much longer before the
bell. Erna, sitting next to her at the desk by the window was evidently
wondering the same thing, because Flip felt a nudge: she looked
over, then quickly took the rolled up note Erna was handing to her.
She read it. "How many more dreary minutes?"
Flip reached across the aisle and nudged Solvei Krogstad, who had
a watch. Solvei took the note, looked at her watch, scribbled "ten" on
the note, and was about to pass it back to Flip when Madame
Perceval's voice came clear and commanding.
"Bring that note to me, please, Solvei." Flip was very thankful that
she wasn't the one who had been caught.
Solvei rose and walked up the aisle to the platform on which the
teachers desk stood. She handed the note to Madame Perceval and
waited. Madame Perceval looked at the note, then at her own watch.
"Your watch is fast, Solvei," she said with a twinkle. "There are
fifteen more dreary minutes, not ten."
Very seriously Solvei set her watch while everybody in the room
laughed.
After Study Hall while they were all gathered in the Common Room
during the short period of free time before the bell that sent them up
to bed, Gloria said to Flip, "I say, that was decent of Percy, wasn't
it?"
Flip nodded.
"Imagine Percy being the Dragon's niece!" Then Gloria yawned. "I
say, Philippa, have you any brothers or sisters?"
Flip shook her head.
"Neither have I. Mummy and Daddy didn't really want me, but I
popped up. Accidents will happen, you know. They said they were
really glad, and I'm not much trouble after all, always off at school
and things. In a way I'm rather glad they didn't want me, because it
relieves me of responsibility, doesn't it? I always have enough
responsibility at school without getting involved in it at home."
Erna and Jackie wandered over. "Hallo, what are you two talking
about?"
"Oh—you," Gloria said.
Erna grinned. "What were you saying?"
"Oh—just how lucky we were to get you two as roommates."
Erna and Jackie looked pleased, while Flip stared at Gloria in
amazement.
"Are you ever called Phil, Philippa?" Erna asked suddenly.
Flip shook her head. "At home I'm called Flip."
Jackie laughed and Erna said, "Flip, huh? I never heard of anyone
being called a name like Flip before."
Gloria began to giggle. "I know what! We can call her Pill!"
Jackie and Erna shouted with laughter. "Pill! Pill!" they cried with joy.
Flip did not say anything. She knew that the thing to do was to laugh,
too, but instead she was afraid she might burst into tears.
"Let's play Ping Pong before the bell rings," Jackie suggested.
"Coming, Pill?" Gloria cried.
Flip shook her head. "No, thank you."
She wandered over to one of the long windows and stepped out onto
the balcony. The wind was cool and comforting to her hot cheeks.
The sky was full of stars and she looked up at them and tried to feel
their cold clear light on her upturned face. Across the lake the
mountains of France loomed darkly, suddenly breaking into
brightness as the starlight fell on their snowy tips. Flip tried to
imagine what it would be like when the entire mountains and all the
valley were covered with snow.
From the room behind her she could hear all the various evening
noises, the sound of the victrola playing popular records, the click,
click, click of the Ping Pong ball Erna, Jackie, and Gloria were
sending over the net, and the excited buzz of general conversation.
Although the girls were supposed to speak French at all times, this
final period of freedom was not supervised, and Flip heard snatches
of various languages, and of the truly international language the girls
had developed, a pot-pourri of all their tongues.
"Ach," she heard someone saying, "I left mein ceinture dans le
shower ce morgen. Quelle dope ich bin!"
She sat down on the cold stone floor of the balcony and leaned her
face against the black iron rail. The rail felt cold and rough to her
cheek. She looked down to the path below where Miss Tulip in her
white uniform was walking briskly between the plane trees. Flip sat
very still, fearful lest the matron look up and see her.
The bell rang. Out here on the balcony it did not sound so loud. She
heard the girls in her class putting books, records, note paper, into
their lockers and slamming the doors, and she knew that she would
have to come in and follow them upstairs. But not yet. Not quite yet.
It would take them a little while to get everything put away. She
heard someone else walking along the path below and looked down
and recognized Madame Perceval. Madame Perceval stopped just
below Flip's balcony and leaned against one of the plane trees. She
stood there very quietly, looking down over the lake.
She thinks it's beautiful, too, Flip thought, and suddenly felt happier.
She scrambled to her feet and went back into the Common Room
just as Gloria and a group of girls were leaving. They saw her.
"Oh, here comes Pill!" Gloria shouted.
"Hello, Pill!" they all cried.
The brief happiness faded from Flip's eyes.
7
Almost the most difficult thing, Flip found, was never being alone.
From the moment she woke up in the morning until she fell asleep at
night, she was surrounded by girls. She was constantly with them
but she never felt that she was of them. She tried to talk and laugh,
to be like them, to join in their endless conversations about boys and
holidays, and clothes and boys, and growing up and again boys, but
always it seemed that she grew clumsier than ever and the wrong
words tumbled out of her mouth. She felt like the ugly sister in the
fairy tale she had loved when she was younger, the sister whose
words turned into hideous toads; and all the other girls were like the
beautiful sister whose words became pieces of gold. And she would
stand on the hockey field when they chose teams, looking down at
her toe scrounging into the grass and pretend that she didn't care
when the team which had the bad luck to get her let out a groan, or
the gym teacher, Fräulein Hauser, snapped. "Philippa Hunter! How
can you be so clumsy!" And Miss Tulip glossed over Jackie's untidy
drawers and chided Flip because her comb and brush were out of
line. And Miss Armstrong, the science teacher, cried. "Really,
Philippa, can't you enter the classroom without knocking over a
chair?" And when she fell and skinned her knees Miss Tulip was
angry with her for tearing her stockings and even seemed to grudge
the iodine which she put on Flip's gory wounds.
—If only I knew a lot of boys and could talk about them, she thought,
—or if I was good at sports.
But she had never really known any boys and sports were a
nightmare to her.
So in the Common Room she stood awkwardly about and tried to
pretend she liked the loud jazz records Esmée played constantly on
the phonograph. Usually she ended out on the balcony where she
could at least see the mountains and the lake, but soon it became
too cold out on the balcony in the dark windy night air and she was
forced to look for another refuge. If she went to the empty classroom
someone always came in to get something from a desk or the
cupboard. They were not allowed to be in their rooms except at bed
time or when they were changing for dinner or during the Sunday
afternoon quiet period. She was lonely, but never alone, and she felt
that in order to preserve any sense of her own identity, to continue to
believe in the importance of Philippa Hunter, human being, she must
find, for at least a few minutes a day, the peace of solitude. At last,
when she knew ultimately and forever how the caged animals
constantly stared at in the zoo must feel, she discovered the chapel.
The chapel was in the basement of the school, with the ski room, the
coat rooms and the trunk rooms. It was a bare place with rough
white walls and rows of folding chairs, a harmonium, and a small
altar on a raised platform at one end. Every evening after dinner the
girls marched from the dining room down the stairs to the basement
and into the chapel where one of the teachers read the evening
service. Usually Flip simply sat with the others, not listening, not
hearing anything but the subdued rustlings and whisperings about
her. But one evening Madame Perceval took the service, reading in
her sensitive contralto voice, and Flip found herself for the first time
listening to the beauty of the words: "Make a joyful noise unto the
Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
Sing unto the Lord with the harp, and the voice of a psalm ... let the
hills be joyful together." And Flip could feel all about her in the night
the mountains reaching gladly towards the sky; and the sound of the
wind on the white peaks must be their song of praise. The others,
too, as always when Madame Perceval was in charge, were quieter,
not more subdued but suddenly more real; when Flip looked at them
they seemed more like fellow creatures and less like alien beings to
fear and hate.
After chapel that evening, when they were back in the Common
Room, Flip pretended that she had left her handkerchief and slipped
downstairs again to the cold basement. She was afraid of the dark
but she walked slowly down the cold corridor, lit only by a dim bulb at
the far end, blundering into the trunk room, filled with the huge and
terrifying shapes of trunks and suitcases, before she opened the
door to the chapel.
Down one wall of the chapel were windows, and through these
moonlight fell, somehow changing and distorting the rows of chairs,
the altar, the reading stand. Flip drew in her breath in alarm as she
looked at the organ and saw someone seated at it, crouched over
the keys. But it was neither a murderer lying in wait for her nor a
ghost, but a shadow cast by the moon. She slipped in and sat down
on one of the chairs and she was trembling, but after a while her
heart began beating normally and the room looked familiar again.
She remembered when she was a small girl, before her mother died,
she had had an Irish nurse who often took her into the church just
around the corner from their apartment. It was a small church, full of
reds and blues and golds and the smell of incense. Once her nurse
had taken her to a service and Flip had been wildly elated by it, by
the singing of the choir boys, the chanting of the priest, the ringing of
the bells; all had conspired to give her a sense of soaring happiness.
It was the same kind of happiness that she felt when she saw the
moonlight on the mountain peaks, or the whole Rhône valley below
her covered with clouds and she could lean out over the balcony and
be surrounded by cloud, lost in cloud, with only a branch of elm
appearing with shy abruptness as the mist was torn apart.
Here in the non-denominational chapel at school she felt no sense of
joy; there was no overwhelming beauty here between these stark
walls; but gradually she began to relax. There was no sound but the
wind in the trees; she could almost forget the life of the school going
on above her. She did not try to pray but she let the quiet sink into
her, and when at last she rose she felt more complete; she felt that
she could go upstairs and remain Philippa Hunter who was going to
be an artist; and she would not be ashamed to be Philippa Hunter,
no matter what the girls in her class thought of her.
At last she rose and started out of the chapel, bumping into a row of
chairs with a tremendous clatter. The noise shattered her peace and
she stopped stock still, her heart beating violently; but when nothing
else happened, when no one came running to see who had
desecrated the chapel, she walked swiftly out on tiptoe. She opened
the door and came face to face in the corridor with Miss Tulip in her
stiff white matron's uniform.
"Well! Philippa Hunter!"
Flip felt as though she had been caught in some hideous crime. She
looked wildly around.
"Where have you been?" Miss Tulip asked.
"In the chapel—" she whispered.
"Why?" Miss Tulip snapped on her pince nez and looked at Flip as
though she were some strange animal.
Flip could not raise her voice from a stifled whisper. "I wanted to—to
be alone."
Miss Tulip looked at Flip more curiously than ever. "That's very nice,
I'm sure, Philippa dear, but you must remember that there is a time
and place for everything. You are not allowed in the chapel except
during services."
"I'm sorry," Flip whispered. "I didn't know." She looked away from
Miss Tulip's frizzy dark hair and down at her feet. It seemed that she
had seen more of feet since she had been at school than the rest of
her life put together.
"We won't say anything about it this time." Miss Tulip looked at Flip's
bowed head. "Your part's not quite straight, Philippa. It slants. See
that you get it right tomorrow."
"Yes, Miss Tulip."
"Now run along and join the other girls. It's nearly time for lights out."
"Yes, Miss Tulip." Flip fled from the matron and the musty dampness
of the corridor.
But she knew that she would go back to the chapel.
8
The following day Art was the last class of the morning. Madame
Perceval had said to the new girls, "I want you to paint me a picture.
Just anything you feel like. Then I will know more what each one of
you can do."
Flip was painting a picture of the way she thought it must look up on
the very top of the snow-tipped mountains, all blues and lavenders
and strange misshapen shadows. And there was a group of ice-
children in her picture, cold and wild and beautiful. During the first Art
Class they had just drawn with pencil. Now they were using water
color.
Madame Perceval came over and looked at Flip's picture. She stood
behind Flip, one strong hand resting lightly on her shoulder, and
looked. She looked for much longer than she had looked at anyone
else's picture. Flip waited, dipping her brush slowly in and out of her
cup of water. Finally Madame said, "Go on and let's see what you're
going to do with it." She didn't offer suggestions or corrections as
she had with most of the others, and as she moved on to the next
girl she pressed Flip's shoulder in a friendly fashion.
The Art Studio was on the top floor of the building. It was a long,
white room with a skylight. There were several white plaster Greek
heads, a white plaster hand, a foot, and a skull, and in one corner a
complete skeleton which was used only by the senior girls in
Advanced Art. The room smelled something like Flip's father's studio
and the minute Flip stepped into it she loved it and she knew that
Madame Perceval was a teacher from whom she could learn. She
chewed the end of her brush and thought fiercely about her painting
and her ice-children and then twirled her brush carefully over the
cake of purple paint. Now she had completely forgotten the school
and being laughed at and her incompetence on the playing fields
and being screamed at and left out and pushed away. She was living
with her ice-children in the cold and beautiful snow on top of the
mountain, as silver and distant as the mountains of the moon.
She did not hear the bell and it was a shock when Madame Perceval
laughed and said, "All right, Philippa. That's enough for this time,"
and she saw that the others had put their paints away and were
hurrying towards the door.
There was almost fifteen minutes before lunch and Flip knew that
she could not go to the Class Room or the Common Room without
losing the happiness that the art lesson had given her and she
wanted to go some place quiet where she could read again the letter
from her father that had come that morning. She thought of the
chapel and she thought of Miss Tulip. It's Miss Tulip or God, she said
to herself, and went to the chapel.
In the daylight there were no moving shadows; everything was as
white and clean as the snow on the mountain peaks. Flip sat down
and read her letter, warmed by its warmth. She was once again
Philippa Hunter, a person of some importance if only because she
was important to her father and he had taught her to believe that
every human being was a person of importance. After she had
finished the letter for the third time she put it back in her blazer
pocket and sat there quietly, thinking about the picture she had been
painting that morning, planning new pictures, until the bell rang.
Then she hurried up the stairs and got in line with the others.
Because she was the tallest girl in the class she was last in line, but
Gloria twisted around from the middle of the row calling, "I say, Pill,
where did you rush off to after Art?"
"Oh—nowhere," Flip said vaguely.