The Game Deserves The Best

That was shortly before spring training in 1966, but Miller still had to visit the training camps and win the approval of the players. It was during this trip that the long knives really came out. I was with Houston at the time, and when Bobby Lillis, our player representative, told me President Giles was in the Astrodome speaking with the players against Miller, I went to see Giles. "No. 1," I said to him, "I don't understand how you as league president, representing the owners and the players, can tell the players Miller is not good for them. Have you ever met Miller?" He replied, "No." I said, "Do you know much about him?" Giles said "no" again. And I said, "Well, it seems asinine that you can tell ballplayers that this man is bad for them. He may be wonderful for baseball. I happen to believe he is."

I still believe it and I am still interested in the work of the association. Baseball is so much more important than the minimum salary, or how long it takes to become a free agent or even the pension, which I look upon as a form of deferred compensation. While these things are important, the rest really matter: the playing, the Mickey Mantles coming up, the Jim Bunnings, the Hank Aarons, the Willie Mayses.

The game is in trouble with problems that will not be solved by platooning ball players, tinkering with the rules or the strike zone. More first-rate young players have to be brought in, and that is something with which the Players Association could help the owners, if the two groups would only get together. It will not be easy to get the new stars, since so many of the fine young athletes are drifting toward pro football or basketball, where they can qualify right out of college without having to work at their trade two or three additional years, as almost every baseball player must.

Let us pay attention to the future of baseball, then, with the players and the club owners working together. I am convinced that the Players Association can do much more than it has done for baseball and that disputes over such things as the pension will stop barring the way if only the owners will get it through their heads that give-and-take negotiations with a representative such as Marvin Miller are here to stay. The owners should stop saying, "Take it or leave it." That is no way to deal with baseball. The game has proved it deserves better.