Tom Glavine has benefited handsomely from an economic system he fought hard to preserve during baseball's 1994 strike. His new contract with the Braves will push his career earnings past $130 million.

From a starting salary of $62,500 in his rookie season with the Braves to a peak salary of $11 million with the New York Mets, Glavine has had a series of contracts that parallel baseball's economic expansion.

He was making about $700,000 when he won his first National League Cy Young award in 1991 and $7 million when he won his second in 1998. He was making $4.75 million when he was the MVP of the 1995 World Series, which gave Atlanta its first (and only) major pro sports championship.

The one-year, $8-million deal Glavine signed with the Braves last week is modest by baseball's current standards — appropriate, he said, for a pitcher who no longer views himself as a No. 1 starter. The contract will make the 303-game winner the fourth-highest paid pitcher on the Braves' staff, behind Mike Hampton, John Smoltz and Tim Hudson.

But in a reflection of how the game's salary scale has soared, Glavine's now-modest deal isn't much different in annual value than a then-landmark contract he signed with the Braves a decade ago. That deal — worth an average of $8.5 million per year for four years with an $8 million option for a fifth - ever-so-briefly made Glavine baseball's highest-paid pitcher when signed in May 1997. The contract expired after the 2002 season, whereupon Glavine signed with the Mets.

After five seasons in New York, he declined a $13 million option for 2008, getting a $3 million buyout from the Mets instead, then the $8 million contract from Atlanta.

Glavine returns to the Braves with the sport — and the team — in financial health unfathomable at the time of the bitter strike that resulted in cancellation of the 1994 World Series. Major League Baseball recently reported revenue of $6.075 billion this year — triple the pre-strike level. And recent financial filings by Braves owner Liberty Media left no doubt that the Atlanta team is very much taking part in the game's prosperity.

Glavine's pro-union outspokenness during the strike might be vindicated by the game's current economic success, but it also fueled the boos that greeted him on visits to Turner Field in recent years.

"I guess if there's one mistake I made during those years as a union rep and especially during the strike, I was too visible," Glavine said. "I guess in hindsight... maybe I wouldn't have done so many interviews. But I looked at it as my job as a player rep to try to represent my players."

"You have to understand," Braves manager Bobby Cox said, "that [union chief] Don Fehr wanted the strongest possible player out there and a smart one to represent the union at that time. And out of 850 players, Tommy was selected. A guy like that can be on my side anytime."