Friend of the blog and current American University law student Jennifer Simile was kind enough to forward us her term paper on Miller and his impact on the game. It has never felt more appropriate to share this insight with our readers so everyone who loves the game of baseball today can better understand how we’ve come to this point in time.
Baseball management has had a profound impact on organized baseball throughout history. There have been successes and failures alike on the part of management but each decision, for better or for worse, brought the game one step closer to what it is today. The baseball executive who had the most influence on organized baseball was Marvin Miller. Without Miller, players’ rights and bank accounts would have greatly suffered. Organized baseball depends on the players, but the game also hinges on the direction that baseball executives provide. Miller utilized his education and the law to direct baseball players to make enormous advances.
Historically, baseball players had attempted to harness the power of unionizing themselves. In 1890, baseball players formed the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players. In 1900, they formed the Players’ Protective Association. The Fraternity of Professional Baseball Players of America was formed in 1910 and years later in 1946 the players formed the American Baseball Guild. However none of these unions had any lasting power whatsoever and none were truly successful until Marvin Miller provided the union with his direction.
Marvin Miller was the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 through 1983 and under his direction the MLBPA became one of the strongest unions in the United States. Many academics, such as Stephen Jay Gould, cannot think of a better case for the importance of a single person in the history of baseball. Marvin Miller was a “lifelong trade union professional, chief economist for the United Steelworkers of America, and a brilliant, persistent, patient, and principled man.” Miller truly transformed the game. Red Barber once said that Babe Ruth was the most influential player in baseball. Barber then went on to say that “the second most influential man in the history of baseball is Marvin Miller…. Miller formed the players’ union. And from the union we have free agency, we have arbitration. The entire structure of baseball changed-the entire relationship between the players and the owners.”
Before Miller came along, players were underpaid and working conditions were abysmal. Unfortunately, the players had little power over their own contracts and were largely unable to produce change. In 1968, Miller negotiated the MLBPA’s first collective bargaining agreement which raised the minimum salary from $6,000 to $10,000, which amounts to a nearly seventy percent increase. This achievement marked the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of professional sports and marked the beginning of a long, influential career representing professional baseball players for Marvin Miller.
Although Miller made numerous advancements for professional baseball, his two greatest successes were the establishment of impartial arbitration for settling contract and other disputes, and the invalidation of the reserve clause which ushered in free agency.
In 1970, Miller helped players negotiate the right to arbitration to resolve grievances – an achievement Miller considers the most significant of the union’s early years. This right to arbitration was included in the players’ collective bargaining agreement and meant that disputes would be taken to an independent arbitrator for resolution. Previously, disputes had been taken to the Commissioner. Because the
Commissioner is hired by the owners he generally ruled in favor of the owners. Having an independent arbitrator resolved the problem of unfair bias and prejudice that the Commissioner brought into each attempted adjudication. The impartial dispute resolution process paved the way for nearly all of the gains the players would achieve in ensuing years.
Four years later in 1974, Miller used arbitration to resolve a dispute between Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley and James Augustus “Catfish” Hunter. Finley had failed to make an annuity payment as required by Hunter’s contract. The arbitrator ruled that Finley had not met the terms of the contract so Hunter was free to negotiate a new contract with any team – making Hunter a free agent. Hunter then signed a five-year, $3.5 million contract with the Yankees, showing the players the large amount of money that could be made when they were free to negotiate with any team.
Baseball’s reserve clause bound players to a team for one year beyond the end of an existing contract, which effectively froze any player’s ability to determine his own career in professional baseball. Owners, seeking to ensure that they received the bulk of profits from the business of baseball, instituted the “Reserve Clause” – every baseball player was contractually obligated (or “reserved”) to his team unless the team traded or released him. Players had little to no say in where they played. Free agents, on the other hand, could choose to accept a contract from any team they wished. However, the demand for the services of free agents was very low because players could only become free agents upon their release, and players were typically only released when their ability to play baseball was greatly diminished due to age or disability. Owners could pay their players whatever they liked, treat players however they wished, and the players unfortunately could not do anything about it.
In 1972, Curt Flood, an all-star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, attempted to attack baseball’s reserve system. Begun as a mere grievance arbitration, Curt Flood’s claim was eventually heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. Flood refused to be traded to the Philadelphia Phillies after his 1969 season and sought injunctive relief from the reserve clause. Although the Court ruled in Major League Baseball’s favor by a margin of 5-3, the Court admitted the original grounds for baseball’s antitrust exemption were tenuous at best, that baseball was indeed interstate commerce for purposes of the act and baseball’s exemption from the Sherman Act was an “anomaly” that it had explicitly refused to extend to other professional sports or entertainment. By showing Marvin Miller and the MLBPA that they could not rely on the Court to strike down the antitrust exemption and the reserve clause along with it, this admission paved the way for free agency because Miller was then aware that labor law might prove a more fruitful opportunity for the invalidation of the reserve clause.
In 1974, Miller encouraged Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos to refuse to sign a new player contract at the end of the season and to play out the following renewal year without signing a contract. After the renewal year of their contracts had elapsed, both players filed a grievance arbitration. The ensuing Seitz decision declared that both players had fulfilled their contractual obligations and had no further legal ties to their baseball clubs. The arbitrator stated that no one challenges the right of a club to renew a player’s contract with or without his consent for the period of one renewal year. However, this contractual relationship between the baseball club and the player terminates at the end of the first renewal year. This meant that clubs could no longer annually renew a player’s contract indefinitely. The Seitz decision, which was later upheld in federal court, effectively eradicated the reserve clause and ushered in free agency. This decision was not only important to professional baseball but also produced the first major change in the sports labor market as a whole.
The issue of free agency was contentious in the immediate aftermath of the Seitz decision. After a 17-day owner-imposed lockout of the players during spring training, Marvin Miller reached out to Commissioner Kuhn to reach a new collective agreement in the summer of 1976. The agreement modified free agency considerably. Under the new agreement, a player had to accept his club’s unilateral contract offers or not play at all during the first two years of his career. Then, from years three to six, the player was still contractually bound to his initial club but had the right to use arbitration to dispute an appropriate salary. After six years’ of service, a player gained the right to full free agency.
Miller embraced this compromise knowing that the six-year waiting period would limit the supply side of the market and drive salaries upward through competitive bidding. As an economist, Miller understood that too many free agents flooding the market could actually drive down player salaries.
Many owners and baseball executives had fought against free agency for decades. Owners insisted that free agency would lead to an unfair concentration of talent but in fact, free bidding has greatly increased interest and competition on the field. Thanks in large part to Marvin Miller, baseball owners had to share a much larger portion of their profits to obtain the talent to field a successful team. During Miller’s time with the MLBPA from 1966 to 1982, the average players’ salary rose from $19,000 to $241,000. The game of baseball would not be what it is today without the contributions Marvin Miller made to baseball and players may have struggled to receive adequate pay for much longer if Miller had not found a way around baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws.
Throughout the history of organized baseball, executives have made large contributions to the game. Management has seen triumphs and tragedies alike; however, the man who had the most influence on organized baseball was Marvin Miller. Miller empowered the players and enlarged their bank accounts, ushering in a new era of professional baseball. In all, Miller helped players collectively negotiate enormous advances in salaries, benefits and working conditions over five collective bargaining agreements with the owners during his tenure. To reach those agreements, Miller guided the players through strikes in 1972, 1980 and 1981 as well as lockouts in 1973 and 1976. At times, labor disputes were quite contentious, but only served to strengthen the players’ resolve, and Miller helped preserve that strength by emphasizing to each succeeding group of players the sacrifices that had been made on their behalf by players who came before them. Organized baseball would not be what it is today if it were not for the way Marvin Miller influenced players and manipulated the law to forever change the face of baseball.
Alexander Herd
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