One on One with Marvin Miller

Jimmie Turner

Today's big-league ball players will forever be indebted to Marvin Miller. He served as the Major League Baseball Players Association's (MLBPA) first full-time executive director from 1966 to 1982, and is best known for establishing today's free agency system.

For decades, players were governed by a "reserve clause," which essentially bound them to the team with which they began their careers. By eradicating the clause, big leaguers were able to choose the team they wanted to play for as well as negotiate with other owners. During Miller's tenure, a player's average salary increased from $19,000 to $240,000. Now, it exceeds $1 million.

Miller comes from a strong union family. He was a member of various local, state and federal unions before joining unions in the private sector. He made a name for himself during 16 years at the United Steelworkers of America.

Former St. Louis Cardinal star Curt Flood is mistakenly credited for establishing free agency. In 1970, Flood lost a lawsuit claiming that baseball violated the U.S. anti-trust law. Free agency arrived five years later, thanks to a suit by two pitchers and the determined legal work of Miller. The reserve clause passed into history.

Today, the MLBPA is regarded as one of the strongest unions in the nation. And Miller and Flood are on the Hall of Fame ballot for 2003.

What compelled you to take on the challenge of becoming the MLBPA's first full-time executive?

I had been with the Steelworkers for over 16 years. I liked what I was doing. But an election for the presidency in 1965 created a deep split. I was spending more and more of my time on political in-fighting than on representing the membership. In addition, the players' association had so little that you could not help but succeed.

Some people say you were the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.

I think that's an exaggeration. My experiences were very different than most of the labor leaders of my time or before. The big advantage I felt I had when I moved from a union as large as the Steelworkers was that you could get to every single [player] member.

What were your biggest hurdles in building the players' association?

Major league players had no work background at all. They played in the minor leagues and in school, but they didn't have what we call real work experience, which meant they had no union background. With management, too, the problem was lack of experience. It is true that some of the owners of major league franchises had come from other business enterprises and other industries, and some of those were even union industries. But the owners seemed to divorce themselves from that. Baseball's management group had no union experience — didn't want it.

Did either your upbringing or early experiences steer you toward union activism?

My father was a salesman of women's coats on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For most of my childhood, he worked seven-day weeks, and except for Friday night or Sunday, he was never home for dinner. But department store employees organized stores in New York. When I was very young I saw my father on the picket line, and I knew why. I enjoyed the regular paid vacations, paid holidays and so on the union won for those people.

Did you ever imagine you'd see the kind of salaries that are now in professional sports? Are today's players overpaid egotists?

If you had told me that the players were going to be able to market their services and get market price for them, and if the clubs were going to have revenue of $3.5 billion a year [which they do today], yeah, I could have guessed the current salary structure. When fans or anybody else says someone is overpaid, I don't know what they mean by that. If a wage or a salary is set in relationship to an open-market price, you can't be overpaid. It's possible, however, for an employer to overvalue the talent that he is signing.

What do you think of today's club owners?

I really don't know them. I've been retired more than 20 years at this point, and they have a turnover that's faster than that of the players. I still follow developments in major league baseball, and as far as their labor/management relationship practices are concerned — from what I know of them — the owners are still as foolish as they ever were. In 30 years, a dispute has never risen to the level of a work stoppage except over issues insisted upon by the owners. And that is unlike any other industry.

Curt Flood's stand against the reserve clause cost him his career. Do you regard his case as tragic or historic?

Both. At that point in time, all of the players were pieces of property. When Flood decided that he wasn't going to accept a trade from the Cardinals to the Phillies, I felt in part responsible because of what I had said about the reserve clause. What I wanted to do was make sure that Flood understood the dangers of a lawsuit, because I felt it was a sure shot that we could lose. Curt asked me, "Would it benefit other players and players of the future?" I said yes. And he said, "That's good enough for me." He was a man of great integrity.

Do you have any words of advice or wisdom for the players and owners?

I don't think the players need advice. I think that they are a good bunch of solid trade union- ists at this point. The owners could use some, and the advice I would give is: Take a look at your own history. There's hardly anybody there who knows or can profit from the errors they made in causing strikes in 1981, 1994 and so on. And my advice would be the same in any other situation where the participants didn't know the history: Go study it.

How about advice for the next generation of union organizers?

I don't know what's coming in this next generation. I would say this, though, based on my experience with the ball players: I found it important that all of the important decisions have input from the members. In addition to encouraging informal meetings with all the players, we used to encourage the players to visit the union at all times. I know it's not always practical, but it certainly should be the aim. The closer you can come to having the leadership and membership meet frequently, the better off you're going to be.