I am unable to recall the first time I met Marvin Miller but I do remember a brief exchange with Ron Santo. It was in 1966 during spring training after a players` search committee had declared Miller the only candidate for election as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Miller had begun a swing of the camps, starting in Arizona, for ratification.
”But the owners don`t like him,” Santo said, in disapproval.
Santo was 26, already an All-Star third baseman, preparing for his seventh season with the Cubs, nonetheless, naive in the ways of the world, particularly in the area of labor relations.
I told Santo he didn`t understand. That the owners and their management representatives were warning the players against Miller was the best indication that the players should hurry and hire him. The owners, in the main, characterized Miller as a union goon.
For the previous 16 years Miller had been with the Steelworkers Union, working out of the headquarter office in Pittsburgh. By the time the players came after him, he had a record of outstanding achievement. He was, for example, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, to a blue-ribbon advisory committee, called to adjudicate thorny national labor-management disputes.
I was reminded of the moment with Santo while reading Miller`s book, published last month, ”A Whole Different Ball Game” (Birch Lane Press, $19.95). Writes Miller, page 47:
”I want you to understand that this is going to be an adversarial relationship. A union is not a social club. A union is a restraint on what an employer can otherwise do. If you expect the owners to like me, to praise me, to compliment me, you`ll be disappointed. In fact, if I`m elected and you find the owners telling you what a great guy I am, fire me! Don`t hesitate, because it can`t be that way if your director is doing his job.”
The four clubs training in Arizona and California in 1966 swallowed the propaganda. The cumulative vote against Miller was 102-17 (10 of the 17 favorable votes were from the Cubs). Miller then headed to Florida. He was elected by a comfortable majority, 489-136.
Miller, of course, was correct. Eventually, some of the owners did acknowledge a grudging respect. But they never liked him. And they will like him even less as a result of his book, which, in effect, concludes his 25-year crusade for big-league baseball players.
Curt Flood, in his 1970 autobiography, ”The Way It Was,” described the status of the union before Miller`s arrival:
”It was a stooge organization right out of the employer`s hip pocket, one more item on our list of grumbles. Most of the grievances (brought to the owners) were along the lines of inoperative clubhouse plumbing, splintered dugout benches and the number of free tickets to which players were entitled. ”The issues were trivial in comparison with the inequities of baseball life. The association was not supposed to alarm or annoy the owners. The owners ran the association. It was a company union.”
When Miller took office on July 1, 1966, the minimum major-league player salary was $6,000, the average $19,000. During the previous 20 years, a period of steep inflation, the minimum had been increased only once, by $1,000 to $6,000.
Also, the players` pension plan was in jeopardy and the reserve clause that bound a player, unless sold or traded, to one club in perpetuity, was in effect. There was no salary arbitration; if a player didn`t agree to terms he sat out the season, without pay. And the commissioner, hired by and whose salary is paid by the owners, had the final word on all player-management grievances.
To say that Miller led the revolt would not be altogether accurate. To his surprise and delight, he inherited a street-wise and angry constituency. Often, the players were more militant and took him by the hand. Miller always advised silence, aware that open criticism of management invited deportment, superstars excepted.
I recall one of the times when the players were laying low. A heavy majority, probably 90 percent, was eager to strike. But no one spoke during the prelims, only Miller. When I mentioned this to Joe Torre, then among the most active player reps, Torre said:
”That`s one of the things Marvin does for us. We hide under his skirt.” Miller did more, of course, than provide shelter. With the assistance of Dick Moss, the players` long-time attorney, the union scored an unbroken succession of victories, at the bargaining table and in the courts.
A historic grievance procedure, which for the first time included an outsider-an impartial arbitrator, who in times of stress was, in effect, the acting commissioner, was won during the 1968 negotiations. Four years later the owners, to their eternal regret, approved salary arbitration, the main engine that fueled the salary revolution. And, then, in 1975, the Messersmith Decision that severely diminished the reserve system.
By the time Miller retired, after the 1982 season, the average player salary had risen more than ten-fold, to $245,000. Pension increases were equally spectacular. Although Miller is no longer at the throttle, the union is a runaway train. The average annual salary is now more than $800,000, with 39 players at or above the $3 million plateau.
”A Whole Different Ball Game” is not a personal memoir. Miller devotes only eight of the 413 pages to his boyhood, a warm reminiscence of loving parents and his Brooklyn roots. Otherwise, Miller spares no one, except John Gaherin who during Miller`s time had the woeful assignment of negotiating for a constantly splintered management.
Clearly, Miller`s motivation is to provide a historical perspective for the current and future players, at the same time offering a useful primer for continued success.
Miller, speaking to the players, possibly for the last time:
”Although it`s unlikely to happen, the players of today and tomorrow-with their seven-figure salaries, multiyear guaranteed contracts, salary arbitration and free agency rights, six figure pensions after retirement, and much, much more-should pause periodically in their busy lives and think about how it all came about, starting 25 years ago.
”In the process, they should try to understand that those players who set in motion this revolution in baseball were paid, on average, about two percent of today`s salaries; their minimum salary was six percent of the 1990 minimum, and the superstars were paid less than three percent of today`s top salaries. ”In 1992, Roger Clemens and Dwight Gooden will be paid more than the total payroll of all the major-league clubs combined ($9.5 million) when the players` union began in 1966.”
