He never approached the Mendoza Line as a hitter nor set foot on the mound as a pitcher.
And, in fact, he has never worn a big league uniform.
Yet, as Major League Baseball announced its latest Hall of Fame inductees yesterday, Marvin Miller remains one of the most glaring exclusions from Cooperstown.
On a day when Bill Mazeroski won an overdue place, joining Hilton Smith among the game’s honor roll, Miller’s absence from it stands as an error on the part of the Veterans Committee.
For as a heavy hitter who helped change baseball, Miller has few peers. As someone who won milestone victories, few individuals in the game’s history loom larger.
Miller falls under the category of "contributor" – in the manner of owners, general managers, etc. Unlike the others, however, Miller remains a contributor today despite having retired in 1985 as the executive director of the Major League Players Association. His imprint on the game remains as evident now as when he helped shepherd the landmark free agency case of Messersmith v. Dodgers in 1975.
Terms such as "arbitration" and "free agent," now part of the game’s lexicon, had no application to baseball until the former United Steelworkers official signed on. Whether you bemoan or embrace that fact, Miller’s role in revolutionizing both the game and the business of baseball is undeniable.
When Alex Rodriguez signed with Texas for $252 million, it was a deal largely made possible through changes wrought by Miller. When Ken Griffey Jr. wanted to go to Cincinnati, it was advances guided by Miller that opened the way.
Today, when the average Major League salary is nearly $2 million, it is hard to imagine there ever existed a time when Miller’s services were required. But when Miller became the players’ union chief in 1967 the owners held all the cards and set the rules. The minimum players’ salary was $6,000, a figure that had increased by just $1,000 in 20 years.
Players were little more than chattel, bound to their original teams for as long as an organization desired under the restrictive reserve clause, with no say in trades. They had trouble getting the owners’ ears on such basic issues as padding the outfield walls or moving training room whirlpool machines away from exposed electric wires.
When Miller arrived, negotiating was a foreign concept to owners, one they had little patience for or interest in. Teams would turn on the sprinklers when he tried to meet with his membership in the outfield. Once, legend has it, Leo Durocher picked up a fungo bat and bombarded a meeting.
More than 30 years later, despite the landscape-altering changes he helped bring, baseball still doesn’t know what to do with Miller.
