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 MARVIN MILLER ...still waiting at age 93 |
Leaving Miller out of Hall
of Fame is a felonious act
of TheColumnists.com
The Crime of the
Century.
Every headline writer at every newspaper in America has identified
a local murder, a possible collection of serial killings or the
demise of a celebrity in this colorful cliché of crime
reporting.
It glamorizes and glorifies the event. It provides excitement
for the readership. It elevates the routine into the sensational.
Now here is a Baseball Hall of Fame Crime of the Century. Marvin
Miller is not a member.
Red Barber, the Hall of Fame broadcaster, once said, “The
three people who changed the game the most are Babe Ruth, Jackie
Robinson and Marvin Miller.”
An ownership cabal has kept Miller from his rightful place among
the game’s elite. A plaque in his honor belongs in the halls
of Cooperstown, alongside Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson
and Christy Mathewson, Connie Mack and Bill Veeck, Larry MacPhail,
Lee MacPhail and Walter O’Malley.
After a distinguished career as a labor negotiator for the United
Steelworkers, Miller was selected as executive director of the
Players Association by a baseball players committee led by Robin
Roberts, Harvey Kuenn and future United States Senator Jim Bunning
to lead the group in 1966.
“One of the things Bunning said to me when I was picked,”
Miller said, “was to never call our association a union.”
Call it what you want. The group of players had a minimum salary
then of $6,000 a year now moved up to $400,000. Salaries over
$100,000 were unheard of until a combined holdout that year by
Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale of the Dodgers broke that artificial
salary barrier. Travel conditions, hotel facilities while on
the road, meal money and spring expenses all grew exponentially.
The pension for retired players and their widows became significant.
Dignity was created.
The greatest change Miller negotiated, after Curt Flood’s
landmark case for freedom opened the door, was free agency. Like
working people in all trades, baseball players can now move from
team to team with a better offer.
Miller was honored recently as his 93rd birthday approached with
formal induction into the International Jewish Sports Hall of
Fame located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Three members of that distinguished
honored group, former Olympic sculler Don Spero, former New
York Times Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow and this writer
celebrated with him at a Manhattan restaurant.
The absence of the baseball Hall of Fame honor clearly stings
at this late stage of his life but other honors, his own writings,
his frequent interviews and his occasional advice to his former
Players Association colleagues fill his active schedule.
He recently lost his spouse, Terry, of nearly 70 years and that
pain is clearly written on his face.
Miller seems at his happiest when he receives phone calls from
retired players, so many of whom he led into financial and professional
security.
Ball players are often self-centered individuals, proud of their
unique skills, jealous of their time in the limelight and slow
with appreciation of any others who may have changed their lives.
Hall of Fame induction is usually the only time players thank
the coaches, managers, teammates and early friends who helped
drive them to their exalted standings.
“I was at the All Star game in Pittsburgh in 2006,”
recalled Miller at his celebratory luncheon. “Alex Rodriguez
was with his wife at the restaurant I was at with my wife. He
came over and introduced himself and his wife to me. Then he
said to his wife, ‘You know that new beautiful house we
just bought? This is the man who bought it for us.’ I had
to laugh.”
It was one of the few times that a player seemed to pause to
give credit where credit was due. It was Miller who changed the
$6,000 a year baseball players into the average $3 million-a-year
people of today with the exceptional Rodriguez salary of $26.8
million a year due to his own talent and Miller’s negotiated
free agency.
The game has prospered over the last four decades as never before
with higher income for teams, higher salary for players, better
conditions for all and the growth across the country of beautiful,
recreational stadiums.
Former manager Whitey Herzog and former umpire Doug Harvey will
be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in
July as selected by the Veterans Committee while Andre Dawson
represents the players as selected by working baseball writers.
Miller, again, will be conspicuous by his absence in Cooperstown.
Some 50 living Hall of Famers will represent the 292 who have
been selected for the game’s highest honor since it all
began in 1936 with Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson
and Honus Wagner.
It is time for the living Hall of Famers and all the active members
of the Major League Baseball Players Association to stand up
for justice.
They should come together as one and announce their demand that
Miller be enshrined in baseball’s Valhalla. If the owners
and the Hall of Fame board refuse to elect Miller in a special
way as they did with Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente, the players
should resort to the oldest weapon in union negotiations: No
Game Today.
©2010 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Feb. 1, 2010.
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