Monica Abbott wants change after signing $1 million contract with NPF expansion team
— -- No one else can do what Monica Abbott does with a softball in her left hand. It can be argued that no one ever could. She is the most valuable player in the world for one simple reason: Pitchers these days struggle to dominate the sport. She doesn't struggle.
That she should be compensated accordingly -- an unprecedented contract for an unmatched talent -- is both long overdue and an audacious attempt to speed the pace of progress in women's professional sports.
The Houston-area Scrap Yard Dawgs, National Pro Fastpitch's newest expansion team, this week signed Abbott, a free agent, to a six-year contract expected to pay her $1 million. It is the first million-dollar contract in the history of NPF, which begins its 13th season later this month with six teams and plays a 50-game regular season. The contract is believed to be the most lucrative paid by an individual American professional franchise to an active female athlete in team sports.
"I think it's a proud moment for National Pro Fastpitch," league commissioner Cheri Kempf said. "But I think it goes further than that. I think it's a proud moment for women in professional sports in this country. I feel glad that it's happening in the league. I'm glad that we're going to lead the way, in some respects."
The structure of Abbott's contract highlights how much of a departure it is from the norm in American professional softball, which has an on-again, off-again history that dates to 1976 and the International Women's Professional Softball Association that Billie Jean King helped found. Teams in the NPF must squeeze rosters of at least 18 players within a salary cap of $150,000. Few players earn more than $20,000. Most make low-to-mid four figures for the three-month season. To fit that structure, Abbott's deal pays her a base salary of $20,000 for each of the next six seasons, with attendance bonuses making up the rest. It will not be difficult to qualify for the bonuses, which are triggered when attendance for a small number of games reaches 100 fans, regardless of whether the team is at home or away and whether or not Abbott pitches.
That is the math as it relates to the 30-year-old Abbott, who spent the past five seasons with the Chicago Bandits. It is math designed to catch the eye, like the contract that made Nolan Ryan baseball's first $1 million-a-year player in 1979. But the meaning goes beyond the math.
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