It was believed that the 1968 Cardinals payroll would exceed $800,000.

Light-hitting shortstop Dal Maxville batted .227/.297/.297 with a home run and 41 RBIs. His 1967 $25,000 salary was the lowest on the team.

Roger Maris batted .261/.346/.405 with nine home runs and 55 RBIs. He was paid $75,000. Maris made more money than the entire 1934 world champion Cardinals team.

National Leaguers had an average 1967 salary of about $24,000, with more than one-half of the players earning at least $18,000.

It is difficult to obtain accurate salary data before 1989, but the following are Baseball-Reference's estimates for the following 1968 Cardinals:

Orlando Cepeda    $80,0000
Julian Javier        $45,000
Mike Shannon        $40,000
Dal Maxville        $37,500
Lou Brock        $70,000
Curt Flood        $72,500
Roger Maris        $75,000
Tim McCarver        $60,000
Bob Gibson        $85,000

The following are some of the  salaries of the 2011 world champion Cardinals:

Albert Pujols        $14,508,395
Skip Schumaker    $ 2,750,000
David Freese        $416,000
Ryan Theriot        $3,300,000
Matt Holliday        $16,317,774
John Jay        $ 416,000
Lance Berkman    $8,000,000
Yadier Molina        $5,312,500
Chris Carpenter    $14,259,403

Taking inflation into account, the 1968 Cardinals $800,000 payroll equals about $5 million today.

Team payrolls have skyrocketed since the advent of free agency. The 2011 Cardinals $105,433,572 payroll would have been about $17 million in 1968.