It's Miller time

Former players' union boss deserves a place in Cooperstown

Marvin Miller is on the other end of the phone line, sheepishly cackling about the idea.

Picture the man most despised by baseball lords -- at least until his understudy, Don Fehr, grabbed the union reigns -- perched on the stage in idyllic Cooperstown, N.Y., next summer, accepting induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. That’s bad enough. But given a microphone, Miller is very liable to break into a thought-provoking rant about the unjust treatment of Pete Rose and how the owners screwed the players for so many years.

It’s enough, of course, to boil the blood of old rivals like Bud Selig, Jerry Reinsdorf and Lee MacPhail. And how about this for irony? If the votes fall right, Miller and arch-nemesis Bowie Kuhn, the old commissioner, could be on stage together with the Class of 2003.

OK, the rich baseball guys dread the idea. They view him with the same venom Red Sox fans do the Yankees. But it’s a joke that Marvin Miller isn’t already in the Hall of Fame.

And so, while baseball is mending fences after another labor squabble, Commissioner Selig would be wise to put in a good word for Mr. Miller. Don’t try undoing the past. Just admit the guy’s been a major player in your game.

Getting the call?
Prominent names from the list of 60 managers, umpires and executives eligible for election in 2003
August Busch Jr., St. Louis Cardinals owner
George W. Bush, Texas Rangers owner
Charles O. Finley, Oakland A’s owner
Calvin Griffith, Minnesota Twins owner
Whitey Herzog, manager
Bowie Kuhn, commissioner
Walter O’Malley, Los Angeles Dodgers owner
Billy Martin, player/manager
Joan Payson, New York Mets owner
Bill White, player/broadcaster/NL president
Note: The list will be cut to 15 later this month, with those who receive 75 percent of the vote in a subsequent form election being inducted next summer.

Hey, if Cooperstown is for folks who stood above all others, innovators, guys who truly influenced or changed the game, then explain why Miller isn’t in the joint alongside the likes Bill Veeck, Branch Rickey and Kenesaw Mountain Landis? The executives in the Hall are mostly club owners and league officials. Nice guys, surely. But few packed the smarts or clout of Miller.

The mere fact that ownership continues to despise him indicates Miller’s long-term effect on the game. Like him or not, he brought the labor movement to professional sports and changed the way games are played.

You might recall that it was Miller, after becoming the first executive director of baseball’s Players Association in 1966, who brazenly helped usher in the era of free agency. He would repeatedly out-lawyer the owners in federal courts. And when he stepped down as union boss in 1982, the average player salary had soared from $19,000 to $241,497.

So, at 85, would he like his day in Cooperstown?

“Look, it’s really not up to me,’’ Miller says from his apartment on New York’s Upper East Side. “You don’t campaign for honors. You don’t aspire to them. If it happens it happens. People will make their own judgments. My complaint really has to do with other people like Pete Rose.

“Even there, I want to make myself clear. If there was a vote with regard to Pete Rose and it was negative, well, I wouldn’t agree with it, but at least there would have been a vote. But the notion that the powers that be can tell the [baseball] writers that they can’t vote for him no matter what -- that is scandalous.’’

The fact that his own name now appears on the Veterans Committee list is a point of contention. He says it’s the first he’s formally been a candidate. After some checking, Hall of Fame officials are careful to say that he’s always been eligible.

“All those other years when the so-called Veterans Committee had jurisdiction, believe it or not, they would simply say, ‘He is not eligible,'" says Miller, laughing. “Somebody would ask why not. And the answer would be, ‘He’s not an executive.’ So the former executive director of the players association was not an executive.’’

The old Veterans Committee is history, anyway. And in its place is a system that should favor Miller as it consists of the 58 living Hall of Famers (including those who benefited from the labor movement), 26 media members in the Hall of Fame and two former committee members whose terms have yet to expire.

Some of his old players might help him out, but that’s down the road. Miller would rather hear more these days about the latest labor agreement, gripping about only reading fragments of the deal in newspapers. And he’s clearly irked by some of what he’s read.

Bring up revenue sharing or this payroll tax and he’s on a roll. He’s livid that, as best he can tell, the so-called small-market clubs who would receive the money aren’t required to put it into player salaries.

“They can put it in the bank if they like, and that is what is wrong,’’ he says. “There is no program monitoring the new money. If you really intend it to be put into payroll you would monitor it and you would say what happens if you don’t, including not getting it.’’

That’s the feisty union boss, always ready for a fight. The ink hasn’t been put to the new labor deal, and Miller’s already accusing the owners of trying to pull a fast one.

And that’s why his induction speech, if it gets to that, could be priceless.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Fish, click here.

 

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