It's About Time: Marvin Miller is in the Hall of Fame

Pop quiz—who are the most significant, ground-breaking, important people in the history of baseball?  A good place to start at number one would be Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier and opened up America’s Game to all of Americans (and Puerto Rican shortstops).  Next might be Babe Ruth, who more or less singlehandedly brought baseball’s popularity back after the Black Sox scandal threatened to undermine the popularity of baseball as a professional sport.

Who would you name next?  Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who brought integrity (and racism) back to the sport?  Mark McGwire, who became the poster boy for the steroid’s era?  Bill James, who revolutionized statistical analysis and made sports heroes out of stat nerds?

The answer is Marvin Miller, who was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week.  When Miller took over as the head of the Players’ Association in 1962, the game was in the hands of the Lords of the Realm, the old guard owners who thought they not only owned the teams, but they owned the players.  Players were, collectively, undereducated good old boys who were happy to be paid a pittance for playing a game they loved.  Most baseball players had bought the company line that the owners were wise men who had the best interest of the players at heart and would look out for the players’ best interests.  At a congressional hearing in the 1950’s the president of the Players’ Association said that players had it so good they couldn’t think of anything to ask for in negotiations.

Marvin Miller was a professional labor organizer who knew an exploited work force when he saw one.  Ballplayers generated millions of dollars of revenue but were lucky to be paid a few hundred dollars a year (most players, even stars, had to have jobs during the off-season to make ends meet).  Most egregiously (and this will come as a shock to those of you under 40), players were bound to play for one team for their entire careers; the only option Willie Mays had to playing for the Giants was to not be a ballplayer.  If Mays didn’t like what the Giants wanted to pay him, he couldn’t offer his services to the Dodgers, but he could try his hand at selling cars.  Owners had all the power.

This power was encapsulated in a clause in the standard union contract called the Reserve Clause, which “reserved” the talent of a ballplayer to the team that owned his contract and forbade the player from working for any other professional baseball team.  The player could play without a contract for one year under the terms of his last contract, but at the end of the year he was still bound by the Reserve Clause.  Miller saw an opening when the owner of the Oakland A’s, Charlie O. Finley, breached his contract with pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter by failing to buy him an annuity insurance contract (ironically, Finley had made his fortune selling insurance).  Miller took Finley to arbitration, and the arbitrator ruled that because the contract was breached Hunter was free to sign with any team who wanted to pay him.  The Yankees signed him for $3.5 million over 5 years, with a $1 million signing bonus.  Suddenly the owners’ claims that players were worth only a few thousand dollars a year seemed implausible.

Miller persuaded two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, to play without a contract for one year, then challenge the Reserve Clause in arbitration.  The players won, and suddenly players could potentially offer their services to any team that wanted to pay them.

Miller realized that all the players becoming free agents at the same time would flood the market, so he offered the owners a magnanimous “deal”—teams could keep players for 3-4 years before the players became free agents, but players in those first few years could arbitrate any pay dispute.  What Miller knew, but the owners didn’t, was that arbitrators would determine what was fair pay by looking at the pay rate of free agents, essentially paying them as much as free agents.  Players who had been making tens of thousands of dollars were making millions of dollars within a few years.

The owners tried to defeat Miller in negotiations and lawsuits over and over, but Miller outfoxed them every time.  By the time he left as executive Director of the Players’ Association, he had cemented his status as the most successful labor organizer in history; during his time average player salary rose 1,610%, from $19,000 to $326,000.  Needless to say, salaries have continued to rise; On December 9, 2019, Stephen Strasburg signed a seven-year, $245 million contract (Strasburg will make more per inning than the average player made in 1962 for the season, adjusted for inflation).  Giving a player nearly a quarter of a billion dollars almost makes the player richer than the owners.

The only way the owners could get back at Miller was to deny him entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame, something he always took in stride by saying the Hall belonged to the owners anyway, so he didn’t mind not being in.  He was denied entry seven times from 2003 through 2018 (missing by one vote in 2011), but in 2019 he was voted in.

Unfortunately, Miller passed away in 2012, but I imagine he is somewhere chortling with joy at having beaten the baseball owners one final time.   Certainly no one in the past 50 years has had a greater impact on the sport of baseball than the man who freed the slaves from bondage so they could collect their million-dollar contracts and endorsement deals.

There are those who would argue that what Miller did was not necessarily a good thing, but no one can deny he has reformed baseball more than Barry Bonds.