Before The WGA, There Was The MLBPA

I don’t have any updates on the writer’s strike at the moment (I believe negotiations have broken off for now – I’m sure you can find a more current update somewhere), but in the category of labor news, I should note that former Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent wrote a column in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times last Saturday that definitely deserves mention (all the more startling when you realize that the subject of Vincent’s column was Marvin Miller (pictured), the founder of the MLB Players Association, with Vincent representing management).

The topic of Vincent’s column was the inclusion of former commissioner Bowie Kuhn into baseball’s Hall of Fame while ignoring Miller, with Vincent arguing that Miller did more for the game than Kuhn and thus deserves inclusion also.

And I know now that professional athletes today have a very different lifestyle than that enjoyed by their predecessors, so it’s hard to see them in the same light as you would see a construction worker or someone else who worked in a trade and belonged to a union. But all of that wealth and glamor had some hardscrabble beginnings, as Miller himself noted here in an interview with Dave Zirin of Counter Punch (I’m going to let stand some of the typos here)…

DZ: Why were the conditions so ripe for a strong union (in 1965)?

MM: I don't know that they wanted a real union [at first]. If I had to make an educated guess, the one thing the players had which they prized was their pension plan. It was called a benefit plan, That had been put into effect also in 1947 once again the owners saying, let's do something to prevent the union here. 18 years later, two things, were concerning the players. One was that the pension had not kept pace over 18 years of progress, also they picked up strong rumors that the owners were wanting to change it. Television by 1965 had grown tremendously. [L.A. Dodgers owner] Walter O'Mally saw this and wanted to after the benefit plan. But beyond that I was also learning that it was like pulling teeth learning what else made them unhappy. This was because they were a work force basically unschooled in working conditions. They had all undergone a bunch of brainwashing that being allowed to play major league baseball was a great favor that they were the luckiest people in the world. They were accustomed never to think, "This stinks. We need to change this." You have to remember baseball players are very young and with few exceptions have no experience in these matters.

DZ: Did the other movements of the 1960s, the Civil Rights Struggle, the anti-war struggle, had on giving people the confidence to think union?

MM: There is no doubt there was a major connection. You now had a great many black and Latin players. You now had a much more diverse sampling of the American people than in the 1940s. You now had at least some people who were able to think in terms of what was wrong with the society, what was wrong with the conditions, people much more accustomed to think about these things. You have to remember before 1947, the ballplayer came in tremendous proportion from rural areas rather than from cities, from the south and southwest and not from big urban areas. And by and large from anti-union areas.

The Counter Punch article goes on to note the importance of Curt Flood’s challenge of baseball’s reserve clause (Flood is someone else who belongs in the Hall of Fame, a sentiment shared by Miller here), and though it fell short, it was a step along the way to the overturning of the reserve clause in December 1975 leading to free agency.

To me, though, the exclusion of both Miller and Flood shows the small-minded paternalism of the owners of Major League Baseball (who installed former Milwaukee Brewers’ owner Bud Selig as commissioner in the early ‘90s, one of the owners who colluded on restricting players’ salaries in the late ‘80s resulting in a payment of $280 million in damages to the affected players).

The owners had no problem with the likes of Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire jacking baseballs into the stratosphere and boosting the sport’s TV ratings and subsequent ad revenue and not asking any questions about those tiny jars of then-unknown substances hidden in their lockers. But how quickly they turned on their stars when it was all revealed (I hasten to add that no one in that sport in particular is blameless, though).

But at the very least, Miller deserves the same recognition as Kuhn (noted by Vincent, in a borderline personal attack, as a failed businessman in other ventures). To me, this omission is more inglorious than Bill Buckner’s “ball between the wickets” moment in 1986 (and please don’t flame me for that, Mets fans…).

(By the way, totally my bad on that post title; I double checked, and as it turned out, both the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West predated the MLBPA...serves me right for straying from politics I guess.)

Also, as long as we’re on the subject of baseball here, it looks like Phillies center fielder Aaron Rowand is going to sign with another team (Update 12/13: He went to the Giants), since he’s looking for a five-year deal commanding big bucks (enjoying the benefit of free agency that developed under Miller’s leadership, though it began based on the ruling of an arbitrator in the cases of Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith in 1975).

I have to admit that I’m torn here; I have no problem with paying Rowand the money since he’s one the top players in his position, but I’m not sure a five-year deal is wise. I want to give the Phillies a boot for letting him go, but part of me realizes it’s all a business in the end, so good luck to him, and thanks for helping to make last year special.

Update 12/13: Chickens coming home to roost, I see (aw, shut up, Roger - what are you gonna do now? Unretire for the fiftieth time?).