Baseball Hall of Fame is incomplete without Curt Flood and Marvin Miller
Thursday, 21 July 2011 16:49
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/baseball-hall-of-fame-is-incomplete-without-curt-flood-and-marvin-miller
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There will be a few new plaques hanging in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York as of this weekend but the baseball equivalent of the Smithsonian really is not a complete museum. Unlike the basketball shrine in Springfield, Massachusetts (which included Larry Fleischer who was the first Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association as a builder) and the hockey Valhalla in Toronto, Ontario (a museum which inducted Alan Eagleson who founded the National Hockey League Players Association until he was booted for illegal activities), the Cooperstown museum has no room for perceived enemies of baseball like Marvin Miller, the founder of the Major League Baseball Players Association or Curt Flood who challenged baseball's reserve clause. Miller and Flood were major contributors to the game but perhaps they did it in a negative way. Cooperstown does honor two-bit baseball scribes for their contributions for providing baseball propaganda and inducts them into a special wing very year.
Miller just missed being elected into the Cooperstown shrine this year. Apparently there are still resentments from certain segments of baseball that linger. Flood has never been considered a serious candidate for an inclusion as a player.
Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven were voted into the Hall of Fame by baseball's ultimate sycophants--the Baseball Writers of America- last winter. Pat Gillick, a former General Manager whose stops included a stint with the Philadelphia Phillies was voted in by the veteran's committee. This year's winner of the writer's award goes to Bill Conlin who worked in Philadelphia. Roland Hemond got the Buck O'Neill lifetime achievement award and one time Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins announcer Dave Van Horne gets the announcers award.
Flood challenged the reserve clause which used to literally bind players in perpetuity to a club until the player was deemed by a general manager to be unnecessary.
"Evan, I am so pleased you said that,' was Curt Flood's response to a question back in the early 1990s when asked about the baseball fan's joy of the winter meetings--which is a meat market for baseball teams who trade human beings for others in the hopes that the teams will improve and yet forget that they trade a human being.” You know you kind of have that feeling many many times that at this huge conference table, these wonderful men sit in front of all these contracts and like cards they deal them out, you know.
"You want a shortstop, you want a shortstop, here's a shortstop and unfortunately every time you move a piece of paper and I want you to think about it now. Every time you move one piece of paper from this seat in front of someone else, Mrs. Flood has to find a new school, a new apartment, a new set of friends. Mrs. Flood has to find a new neighborhood. Enormous things happen when you move one player from one town to another when you trade or sell him.
"Sometimes the owners lose sight of that."
Curt Flood was a really good baseball player who began his career in 1956 with the Cincinnati Redlegs (the franchise owners for some reason lengthened the name from the Reds to Redlegs in the 1950s partially in response to America's "anti-Red", anti-communist mood with the Reds name removed from the logo. The name Reds would return in the 1960s). He played some games with Cincinnati and was traded during the December 1957 winter meetings to St. Louis.
Flood spent 12 years in St. Louis and was dealt on October 7, 1969 to Philadelphia along with Tim McCarver, Byron Browne and Joe Horner for Dick Allen, Cookie Rojas and Jerry Johnson. It was on October 7, 1969 that life would not only change for Flood and the other players involved in the deal but the baseball industry as a whole.
Flood refused to report to Philadelphia for a variety of reasons.
"I think it was a decision that came over many, many years of subtle abuses that people under contract have to live with," he explained. "It seems that when a handful of men own the industry, advantages are taking of the employees that under no other circumstances would you sit still for. That was true in baseball before we had the chance to really seriously negotiate the rest of our lives and I guess over the years and over a period of time where I saw men being traded while they drove to the ballpark and they heard on the radio that they no longer worked for the team that they were going to get ready to go suit up for, they were traded in between doubleheaders, they were traded or sold for one reason or another, after enduring that with a lot of my friends, I'd often wonder what the heck would happen if it even happened to me.
"And in 1969 that happened and after great successes in St. Louis, one of the, I can't call them underling, but it certainly wasn't Mr. (Gussie) Busch, the owner, called me on the phone one morning and said hi Curt, you know you have been traded. You know, that was probably the most important conversation in my lifetime and sure as check, the next day, a messenger delivered an envelope with an index sized card in it and it said 'Dear" and someone types your name in, you have been and there are five possibilities. You might not know that. You could have been sold, traded, optioned or whatever, outright, right and traded was checked.
"In the 13 years in St. Louis, I don't know. I think on top of all of the other situations that I saw happen over my career span that had to be the last kick in the pants that baseball wanted to give me."
Flood was a very good player and had won seven Gold Gloves as the best centerfielder in the National League between 1963 and 1969. He hit .300 or better six times and set defensive records for a centerfielder. He was part of two St. Louis Cardinals World Series championships and was co-captain of the team. But his relationship with Busch and the Cardinals had fallen apart by 1969. One reason? He asked for $100,000 which in those days was given to just a few players like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Flood’s one time Cardinals teammate Stan Musial.
"I guess a week went by before you say to yourself, this is not a joke, this is serious. You no longer work here. And I guess about a week and I talked to Alan Zerman, who was my attorney then in St. Louis. He said Curt, you know baseball has been doing this to men for 200 years and you are just part of the machinery and there is very little you can do about it. You can challenge this if you want to and it started to germinate then that something illegal had been done to me.
"Something almost inhumane had been done to me. It kind of snowballed from there."
Curt Flood never did report to Philadelphia and filed a lawsuit against Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in January 1970 contending that Major League Baseball had committed an antitrust violation. Flood made $90,000 in 1969 and gave up a $100,000 deal to play for the Phillies in 1970. Instead Flood became immersed in learning about the Sherman Antitrust Act and baseball's history with the legal system. Marvin Miller and the Major League Baseball Players Association picked up Flood's legal bills.
"I learned a lot about the law system," Flood said. "And how it operates. I guess not playing that one year, it is necessary to be damaged in that one year and that would have done that. As I thought about it later on, I wished I had not played that one year in 1971 (with the Washington Senators) and the only thing that made me do it was (manager) Ted Williams, I love him. He was going to manage in Washington and he called me. I was in Denmark and he called up and said can I come up and see you. I thought he was down in the lobby. He said no I am in Washington. He said I will meet you halfway. So him (Senators owner Robert Short), they were both on the phone together and he said, no, no, I am not in the lobby. First of all, Robert Short said I got some guys on this team, I don't know if they can play baseball or not but I know you can and I will send you a contract, you sign it and you fill it in. Hohohoho, now you are talking.
"I said Mr. Short, you know the situation, you know the problems we are having with the reserve clause, all this thing is being litigated now in New York. He said they talked to Arthur Goldberg who then was my attorney, Justice Goldberg said that whatever decision the Supreme Court had made it, it already decided and there is nothing you can do short of jumping off a building, unquote, that would change their mind. So I did, I called Justice Goldberg and Marvin Miller and they said if you want to play again, I don't think there is anything you can do to hurt your case.
"How many times can you turn down $150,000 a year?
"Once there may I tell you.
"So they gave me the opportunity to play again and I wasn't going to turn that down. I'm a nice guy; I think I deserved to play for the Senators."
But Flood was busy litigating in 1970 and the baseball inactivity took its toll on the then 33-year old Flood in 1971. He retired after just 13 games with Washington.
"Seventy was like a long winter. You were always expect that at any moment you were going to go back to (the St. Louis Cardinals spring training site) St. Petersburg (Florida) and start what you really do for a living. After a while all of this kind of settles in and your mind accepts that you are no longer a baseball player," he recalled. "But I spent most of 1970 in Denmark, in Copenhagen, in a little place called Vivek where these wonderful nice Danish people would say what do you do for a living? I'm a baseball player. They would say no no no what do you do? I’m a baseball player.
"How do you feed your family?' he laughed.”They know so little about baseball that you could travel in circles where you could have complete anonymity which delighted me. So, it was not easy.
"It was getting over, cold turkey, something you have done every year for almost 15 years. It wasn't easy. 1970 was not an easy year."
Ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Flood and his challenge of Baseball's reserve clause. Baseball had won again in the Supreme Court. In 1922, the National and the American Leagues got a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed by the owners of the Baltimore team in the Federal League which provided the leagues with protection from the country's antitrust laws.
"I was flabbergasted because I am an American and I thought like an American and I thought that everyone could see that baseball players were getting the short end of a very short stick," Flood said more than two decades after the decision.
"However I was trying to explain this to men who would give their first born child to wear this uniform for a minute. Just let me touch it, you know, for me to tell them in this culture look at you how you too would have loved to have worn that uniform for me to say there is something wrong in baseball is like defiling the flag.
"The Supreme Court, I guess they felt the same way that being a baseball player is the best of all worlds and I ought to sit down someplace and shut up. The Supreme Court did not say that, they said they were going to leave this decision to someone else."
That someone else would be an arbitrator named Peter Seitz who ruled against baseball's reserve clause in 1975 after two pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, played without contracts that season. Both became free agents following the 1975 season and were free to pursue contracts with other teams in 1976.
"I was disappointed (in the Supreme Court decision), I really was," Flood said. "When you look at the issue and the issue is this. Should a man be able to work wherever he wants to? Everyone is shaking their heads yes except if you are a baseball player. If you are a baseball player you have all those fans there who love you. You ought to stay in St. Louis until the owner wants to trade you.
"So I was caught up in the fact that this is America and this is probably the greatest country in the world and you can work in quotes any place you want to with the exception at that time in baseball. Now it's come around (early 1990s) where players are starting to make a fair share of the revenue being made in baseball and that delights me. The press seems to think I had a little to do with it and that pleases me."
Six year minor league players can today opted out of major league organizations and seek a chance elsewhere. Six year major league players can become free agents. Flood was the first player to challenge the reserve clause and before his death in 1997 he talked about whether players like him and Jim Bouton (whose book Ball Four made him the bane of baseball and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's existence) were still lepers in the baseball community.
"No, no no. Well, you see there is a whole new ownership now but they still feel the pinch of the first and 15th (paydays) that may resent me a little. Many of the things I learned in first few days, when you said what was the first week like, in the first week I learned this," Flood explained. "That you will never be a manager (there was no African-American managers in Major League Baseball's modern history through 1969), you will never be in the Hall of Fame and you probably never play baseball again. There are three important points you have to know if you go through with this lawsuit against baseball and now in retrospect those things have never happened. And for me to say that is the reason why would be to get into the heads of ownership which I cannot do."
Flood did say back in the 1990s he was welcomed back to St. Louis. ”One of my teammates (Dal Maxvill) is the General Manager, one of my teammates (Joe Torre) is the manager and many of my greatest friends in the world that I made over 13 years that I was in St. Louis are in some position with the Cardinals there. Joe Cunningham is still with the Cardinals, Ted Savage is still with the Cardinals so of course I am welcomed there," he said.
Curt Flood was never really embraced by baseball. He was hired by another Bowie Kuhn enemy, Oakland A's owner Charles Finley, to work on Athletics radio in 1978 and was the Commissioner of the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association, an entity that lasted two years. Flood became involved with the United Baseball League, an idea that never got beyond the let's do it stage after Rupert Murdoch's FOX Sports merged with Liberty Media. Murdoch had a deal with Major League Baseball at the time.
Flood's lawsuit was filed more than 40 years ago and changed the game. In the 1960s athletes were in some cases activists. Billie Jean King has been marginalized in the 21st century but she fought for equal pay and equal educational opportunities for women in an effort to break the college quota system. The Title IX legislation signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972 was not a sports act rather an education law which gave women equal access to classes and majors in colleges and universities accepting federal funding. Muhammad Ali stuck to his principles in refusing to go into the armed forces in 1967. John Carlos and Tommie Smith staged a black power protest on the podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics which drew the ire of International Olympic Committee head Avery Brundage. All of those athletes were vilified in one way or another in those days. Flood has not been recognized by Cooperstown but his legacy is lasting.
The Curt Flood Act of 1998, signed into law by President Bill Clinton gives baseball players the same rights under American antitrust laws that basketball, football, hockey and soccer players enjoy.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Showing posts with label Baseball Hall of Fame. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baseball Hall of Fame. Show all posts
Friday, July 22, 2011
Friday, November 12, 2010
Baseball Hall of Fame should include Marvin Miller
FRIDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2010 11:16
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/baseball-hall-of-fame-should-include-marvin-miller
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Marvin Miller is once again up for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The 93-year-old Miller literally built the Major League Baseball Players Association with Richard Moss from scratch starting in 1966. By the time Miller left his post as the association's executive director Major League Baseball was transformed with the players gaining free agency and huge sums of money.
Miller, according to many sportswriters and baseball executives, ruined the game.
There are 12 names that the 16-member Hall of Fame Committee will consider at a December 6th vote. Miller's credentials will be examined long with those of eight players, Vida Blue, Dave Concepcion, Steve Garvey, Ron Guidry, Tommy John, Al Oliver, Ted Simmons and Rusty Staub; former five time Yankees manager Billy Martin; and long time baseball executive Pat Gillick, who built championship teams in Toronto and Philadelphia and the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
There are other names that should get consideration are missing, one time Boston and Milwaukee Braves owner Lou Perini, one time Houston Colt 45s and Astros owner Roy Hofheinz and one time Kansas City and Oakland A's owner Charles Finley, The Baseball Hall of Fame is far from perfect and those three along with Miller should have been members of the Baseball Parthenon a long time ago.
Miller was passed over in 2003 and 2007 for baseball political reasons. Miller was not liked because he changed the economics of the industry in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He negotiated new deals with the owners and took their concerns to the courts, the National Labor Relations Board, and arbitrators. His actions eventually led to free agency.
If Jim Kaat, a long time pitcher and announcer, had a vote, Miller would be enshrined immediately. If Bill Madlock, a good hitter in his playing days in the 1970s and 1980s had a vote, Miller would have gotten a call years ago.
"Actually, the central issue that Marvin went after was always the pension plan," said Kaat in an interview in 2000. "Nowadays, you would not think that but the pension plan in the 1960s was much more important to the players than salary. Because in those days, if you projected to when you were 55 or 60 years old and you could draw $30,000 a year in a pension plan...a lot of players weren't making that much in salaries.
"That's how he kept everyone together. If you talk to Marvin, he will reiterate that. It was a big issue.
Kaat came up to the major leagues with the Washington Senators in 1959 and was with the Twins when Miller entered the picture in 1966.
In 1966, the players were tied to their teams because of the reserve clause.
The maximum salary seemed to be $100,000 and that money went to Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays type players. There was no free agency. The owners controlled the game and the players had little to say in their careers.
"It was a combination of getting organized as a players association with all of the television revenue that came until the game," said Kaat. "It gave the players an awful lot of strength. The owners didn't have a lot of foresight in what was going to be."
Kaat went on strike in 1972 along with his fellow association members over the percentage of the nation television revenues that went into the pension plan. That strike lasted nine days and the players got a guaranteed percentage of the TV revenues.
"Marvin used the pension plan as the cornerstone. He got all the stars with a few exceptions," Kaat recalled. "The (Chicago) Cubs had a very good owner in Mr. (Phil) Wrigley, a player-friendly owner. And so did the (Boston) Red Sox in Mr. (Tom) Yawkey. They were a little tougher sell. But we had a big rally in New York City in the late 1960s with Willie Mays, Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente. You had all of these stars saying we won't give in. They stayed together and encouraged all of the players to stay together."
That generation passed the torch to Bill Madlock and the players of the 1970s and 1980s.
"We started off with the Andy Messersmith decision," said Madlock of his introduction to Miller. Messersmith and Dave McNally were granted free agency by arbitrator Peter Seitz and that opened the floodgates in the mid-1970s for player freedom.
"It just got better and better," Madlock said also in 2000. "I think the owners got intimidated by him. They knew very few guys could get these millionaire players together as one. There was no hesitation, what he said we did."
Madlock added that Miller explained all the options that were available to them and let the players decide.
"He did not try to make the decision for us," said Madlock. "He would put out all the information and what affect it would have — not only then but in five or 10 years down the road. He made it very simple.
Miller is head and shoulders ahead of the other 2010 candidates but there are a good number of people who helped "change" the game that aren't honored either.
Without Lou Perini, there is a good chance that Los Angeles and San Francisco, along with the Twin Cities in Minnesota, would have waited until the lords of baseball decided to expand beyond 16 teams to enter those cities. Because of Charles O. Finley, Major League Baseball had teams in Oakland, Kansas City, Seattle, San Diego, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Montreal. Without Roy Hofheinz, it might have taken a lot longer to change the blue-collar fan-base not only of MLB, but also the NFL, into well-heeled customers.
Perini had owned the Boston Braves, a franchise that could not get people out to Braves Field in the early 1950s. He started looking around for greener pastures and knew that Milwaukee city officials were intending on getting an MLB franchise. Milwaukee was the first city to put up taxpayer dollars to build a facility and had talked not only to Perini, but also to the owner of the St. Louis Browns, Bill Veeck, about relocating to the city. Perini took the offer and moved his team in the middle of spring training in 1953. The Milwaukee Braves' franchise broke National League box office records, Perini was suddenly awash with money, and that got the attention of Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley. Because of Milwaukee's success, O'Malley concluded Brooklyn could no longer compete with Milwaukee as long as the team played in Ebbets Field.
Perini's move did not go unnoticed in Minneapolis either, as city leaders decided that if Milwaukee could get a team, they could too. Minneapolis went after Veeck; Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants; the owners of the Philadelphia A's and the Cleveland Indians, and Calvin Griffith's Washington Senators.
Though private industry paid for the initial construction of the Bloomington, Minnesota, stadium, which opened in 1955, Minneapolis officials kicked in $9 million in 1958 to expand the stadium.
O'Malley took his Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957, after striking out in his attempt to get a stadium to his liking from New York City officials. Griffith moved his Senators to Bloomington after the 1960 season.
Perini sold his majority share in the Braves in 1962, but remained on the Braves' board of directors and approved the Braves' franchise move to Atlanta in 1964, a move that opened up the southeast to MLB. O'Malley was elected to the Hall of Fame in December 2007 for his contributions to the industry — but Perini changed baseball, and he should be recognized in Cooperstown.
In 1952, Harris County, Texas, Judge Roy Hofheinz came up with an idea. Why not play baseball indoors under perfect weather conditions? Hofheinz eventually became mayor of Houston and spearheaded the campaign to bring MLB to the city. Hofheinz obtained a franchise for Houston in 1960 and got city and county dollars to pay for the first indoor stadium that featured baseball: the Astrodome. That should have been enough to warrant his inclusion in Cooperstown, but Hofheinz did something else that changed baseball and sports: He introduced the skybox.
Hofheinz was charging about $20,000 annually for the boxes, and that did not go unnoticed by his fellow owners. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle said in the 1980s that the skybox was a "bane to the business," and because of them, NFL owners needed stadium renovations or new stadiums with built-in luxury boxes.
Rozelle was correct, and the 1980s and 1990s were a time of franchise shifts in the NFL because owners were looking for stadiums with luxury boxes. Hofheinz also influenced entertainment by using a scoreboard to entertain people during games.
Finley is in the same category as Marvin Miller when it comes to baseball executives. They hated him and still bear a grudge. Finley tried to move his Kansas City A's a few times in the 1960s and eventually ended up in Oakland in 1968. He was another owner who tried to add some entertainment to baseball: Finley's A's experimented with orange baseballs in spring training; employed ballgirls instead of ballboys; built a zoo behind the outfield fence in Kansas City; advocated the use of the designated pinch hitter and pinch runner; World Series night games; started a trend by using multiple uniform combinations, and gave players money to grow moustaches.
His move to Oakland caused a major chain reaction in baseball that would eventually be felt in Kansas City, Seattle, Milwaukee, Montreal, San Diego, and Toronto. Kansas City did not stop Finley from moving, but a senator from Missouri, Stuart Symington, pressured MLB to get back into Kansas City as quickly as possible or he would begin to dismantle MLB's antitrust exemption. The American League filled the gap by awarding Kansas City and Seattle franchises in 1969, and the National League sped up a possible 1971 expansion and gave teams to Montreal and San Diego. Seattle went bankrupt and, in March 1970, a group led by Bud Selig scooped up the team and transferred it to Milwaukee during spring training. Seattle, which was planning to build a domed stadium, got into a legal battle with the American League, which was finally settled in 1976 when the AL granted teams to Seattle and Toronto. Finley changed the industry by making it more flexible for team migrations, and he should be acknowledged.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is more than just a room filled with plaques honoring great players, umpires and baseball executives. It should swing open the door to people who really made a significant mark on the industry.
Miller should have a plaque in Cooperstown. He is as much responsible for the growth of baseball as anyone who received Hall of Fame honors.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
FRIDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2010 11:16
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/baseball-hall-of-fame-should-include-marvin-miller
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Marvin Miller is once again up for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The 93-year-old Miller literally built the Major League Baseball Players Association with Richard Moss from scratch starting in 1966. By the time Miller left his post as the association's executive director Major League Baseball was transformed with the players gaining free agency and huge sums of money.
Miller, according to many sportswriters and baseball executives, ruined the game.
There are 12 names that the 16-member Hall of Fame Committee will consider at a December 6th vote. Miller's credentials will be examined long with those of eight players, Vida Blue, Dave Concepcion, Steve Garvey, Ron Guidry, Tommy John, Al Oliver, Ted Simmons and Rusty Staub; former five time Yankees manager Billy Martin; and long time baseball executive Pat Gillick, who built championship teams in Toronto and Philadelphia and the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
There are other names that should get consideration are missing, one time Boston and Milwaukee Braves owner Lou Perini, one time Houston Colt 45s and Astros owner Roy Hofheinz and one time Kansas City and Oakland A's owner Charles Finley, The Baseball Hall of Fame is far from perfect and those three along with Miller should have been members of the Baseball Parthenon a long time ago.
Miller was passed over in 2003 and 2007 for baseball political reasons. Miller was not liked because he changed the economics of the industry in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He negotiated new deals with the owners and took their concerns to the courts, the National Labor Relations Board, and arbitrators. His actions eventually led to free agency.
If Jim Kaat, a long time pitcher and announcer, had a vote, Miller would be enshrined immediately. If Bill Madlock, a good hitter in his playing days in the 1970s and 1980s had a vote, Miller would have gotten a call years ago.
"Actually, the central issue that Marvin went after was always the pension plan," said Kaat in an interview in 2000. "Nowadays, you would not think that but the pension plan in the 1960s was much more important to the players than salary. Because in those days, if you projected to when you were 55 or 60 years old and you could draw $30,000 a year in a pension plan...a lot of players weren't making that much in salaries.
"That's how he kept everyone together. If you talk to Marvin, he will reiterate that. It was a big issue.
Kaat came up to the major leagues with the Washington Senators in 1959 and was with the Twins when Miller entered the picture in 1966.
In 1966, the players were tied to their teams because of the reserve clause.
The maximum salary seemed to be $100,000 and that money went to Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays type players. There was no free agency. The owners controlled the game and the players had little to say in their careers.
"It was a combination of getting organized as a players association with all of the television revenue that came until the game," said Kaat. "It gave the players an awful lot of strength. The owners didn't have a lot of foresight in what was going to be."
Kaat went on strike in 1972 along with his fellow association members over the percentage of the nation television revenues that went into the pension plan. That strike lasted nine days and the players got a guaranteed percentage of the TV revenues.
"Marvin used the pension plan as the cornerstone. He got all the stars with a few exceptions," Kaat recalled. "The (Chicago) Cubs had a very good owner in Mr. (Phil) Wrigley, a player-friendly owner. And so did the (Boston) Red Sox in Mr. (Tom) Yawkey. They were a little tougher sell. But we had a big rally in New York City in the late 1960s with Willie Mays, Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente. You had all of these stars saying we won't give in. They stayed together and encouraged all of the players to stay together."
That generation passed the torch to Bill Madlock and the players of the 1970s and 1980s.
"We started off with the Andy Messersmith decision," said Madlock of his introduction to Miller. Messersmith and Dave McNally were granted free agency by arbitrator Peter Seitz and that opened the floodgates in the mid-1970s for player freedom.
"It just got better and better," Madlock said also in 2000. "I think the owners got intimidated by him. They knew very few guys could get these millionaire players together as one. There was no hesitation, what he said we did."
Madlock added that Miller explained all the options that were available to them and let the players decide.
"He did not try to make the decision for us," said Madlock. "He would put out all the information and what affect it would have — not only then but in five or 10 years down the road. He made it very simple.
Miller is head and shoulders ahead of the other 2010 candidates but there are a good number of people who helped "change" the game that aren't honored either.
Without Lou Perini, there is a good chance that Los Angeles and San Francisco, along with the Twin Cities in Minnesota, would have waited until the lords of baseball decided to expand beyond 16 teams to enter those cities. Because of Charles O. Finley, Major League Baseball had teams in Oakland, Kansas City, Seattle, San Diego, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Montreal. Without Roy Hofheinz, it might have taken a lot longer to change the blue-collar fan-base not only of MLB, but also the NFL, into well-heeled customers.
Perini had owned the Boston Braves, a franchise that could not get people out to Braves Field in the early 1950s. He started looking around for greener pastures and knew that Milwaukee city officials were intending on getting an MLB franchise. Milwaukee was the first city to put up taxpayer dollars to build a facility and had talked not only to Perini, but also to the owner of the St. Louis Browns, Bill Veeck, about relocating to the city. Perini took the offer and moved his team in the middle of spring training in 1953. The Milwaukee Braves' franchise broke National League box office records, Perini was suddenly awash with money, and that got the attention of Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley. Because of Milwaukee's success, O'Malley concluded Brooklyn could no longer compete with Milwaukee as long as the team played in Ebbets Field.
Perini's move did not go unnoticed in Minneapolis either, as city leaders decided that if Milwaukee could get a team, they could too. Minneapolis went after Veeck; Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants; the owners of the Philadelphia A's and the Cleveland Indians, and Calvin Griffith's Washington Senators.
Though private industry paid for the initial construction of the Bloomington, Minnesota, stadium, which opened in 1955, Minneapolis officials kicked in $9 million in 1958 to expand the stadium.
O'Malley took his Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957, after striking out in his attempt to get a stadium to his liking from New York City officials. Griffith moved his Senators to Bloomington after the 1960 season.
Perini sold his majority share in the Braves in 1962, but remained on the Braves' board of directors and approved the Braves' franchise move to Atlanta in 1964, a move that opened up the southeast to MLB. O'Malley was elected to the Hall of Fame in December 2007 for his contributions to the industry — but Perini changed baseball, and he should be recognized in Cooperstown.
In 1952, Harris County, Texas, Judge Roy Hofheinz came up with an idea. Why not play baseball indoors under perfect weather conditions? Hofheinz eventually became mayor of Houston and spearheaded the campaign to bring MLB to the city. Hofheinz obtained a franchise for Houston in 1960 and got city and county dollars to pay for the first indoor stadium that featured baseball: the Astrodome. That should have been enough to warrant his inclusion in Cooperstown, but Hofheinz did something else that changed baseball and sports: He introduced the skybox.
Hofheinz was charging about $20,000 annually for the boxes, and that did not go unnoticed by his fellow owners. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle said in the 1980s that the skybox was a "bane to the business," and because of them, NFL owners needed stadium renovations or new stadiums with built-in luxury boxes.
Rozelle was correct, and the 1980s and 1990s were a time of franchise shifts in the NFL because owners were looking for stadiums with luxury boxes. Hofheinz also influenced entertainment by using a scoreboard to entertain people during games.
Finley is in the same category as Marvin Miller when it comes to baseball executives. They hated him and still bear a grudge. Finley tried to move his Kansas City A's a few times in the 1960s and eventually ended up in Oakland in 1968. He was another owner who tried to add some entertainment to baseball: Finley's A's experimented with orange baseballs in spring training; employed ballgirls instead of ballboys; built a zoo behind the outfield fence in Kansas City; advocated the use of the designated pinch hitter and pinch runner; World Series night games; started a trend by using multiple uniform combinations, and gave players money to grow moustaches.
His move to Oakland caused a major chain reaction in baseball that would eventually be felt in Kansas City, Seattle, Milwaukee, Montreal, San Diego, and Toronto. Kansas City did not stop Finley from moving, but a senator from Missouri, Stuart Symington, pressured MLB to get back into Kansas City as quickly as possible or he would begin to dismantle MLB's antitrust exemption. The American League filled the gap by awarding Kansas City and Seattle franchises in 1969, and the National League sped up a possible 1971 expansion and gave teams to Montreal and San Diego. Seattle went bankrupt and, in March 1970, a group led by Bud Selig scooped up the team and transferred it to Milwaukee during spring training. Seattle, which was planning to build a domed stadium, got into a legal battle with the American League, which was finally settled in 1976 when the AL granted teams to Seattle and Toronto. Finley changed the industry by making it more flexible for team migrations, and he should be acknowledged.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is more than just a room filled with plaques honoring great players, umpires and baseball executives. It should swing open the door to people who really made a significant mark on the industry.
Miller should have a plaque in Cooperstown. He is as much responsible for the growth of baseball as anyone who received Hall of Fame honors.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Canseco, Sosa and the Olympics
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7521Canseco, Sosa and the Olympics
By Evan Weiner
June 18, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- Jose Canseco is hopping mad and is ready to unleash a class action suit against anyone that seems to be connected with Major League Baseball, the owners and the players and anything that isn't nailed down. Canseco's feels he has been blackballed for writing a book about steroids use in baseball and that has cost him a chance at the Hall of Fame and a job in baseball. While Canseco was looking to get even with someone even though he admittedly used banned substances, the New York Times was publishing a report that was leaked by somebody that Sammy Sosa failed a performance enhancement drug test in 2003. The drug test administered to Sosa was supposed to be confidential and the result was not supposed to be released to the public. Canseco's suit and the Sosa revelation came as the International Olympic Committee reviewing the various cities that are ready to lose billions of dollars in a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Canseco, Sosa and the IOC are joined at the hip.
Canseco's tome on banned performance enhancing drug use in baseball brought to light steroid usage in baseball and it is because of alleged usage of banned performance enhancement drugs by baseball players, according to some in the know, that caused the International Olympic Committee to drop baseball from the quadrennial sports event known as the Olympics.
Canseco's book also spurred Congress to get off its collective duffs for one of the great shows of all time, the Major League Baseball comes clean hearing before a House committee on St. Patrick's Day 2005, where a parade of players including Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro hemmed and hawed about whether they used banned performance enhancing drugs before the Committee on Government Reform.
Congress, which among other things had two wars going at the time, took both the baseball owners and the players to the woodshed and shamed the two sides into toughening up their collective bargaining agreement in terms of drug testing but the St. Patrick's Day celebration of the great American game left one question that no one wants to answer.
If steroid usage in the United States is illegal, why weren't the players caught violating the collective bargaining agreement by testing positive for a banned substance looked upon as cheaters and not lawbreakers?
This is an important part of the entire banned performance enhancing drug usage problem that allegedly exists in sports and it gets back to whether athletes get special treatment. The International Olympic Committee's whole argument that baseball's drug policies aren't tough enough is laughable when you consider the IOC President Jacques Rogge was begging Italian law enforcement personnel to let the IOC police the Turin Olympic Village during the 2006 Winter Olympics because the athletes who might be caught with banned enhancers were really cheating and it was not a criminal offense.
What is even more troubling is how one law enforcement official in Harris County, Texas views athletes taking banned substances. "I’d like to see any players who have broken the rules face up to it publicly and do everything within their powers of persuasion to dissuade young people from using these drugs as opposed to sending them to prison. I think the truth has great powers for them. It’s got to be awful for them to know that they cheated and then perhaps committed perjury," said Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos to a reporter who did a story on her in the Houston Chronicle newspaper about two weeks ago.
The shame of being named a cheater triumphs breaking the law.
Some members of Congress are thinking about reviewing Sosa's testimony in light of the New York Times report. There is one player who got caught up in the Congressional hearings who pled guilty to lying to Congress. Houston's Miguel Tejada, who plays in Lykos' Harris County, didn't fess up to lawmakers about his anabolic steroids usage. Tejada could have faced a year in jail and deportation on February 11, 2009 when he appeared in court. Instead he got what amounted to a slap on the wrist as on March 26, he received probation.
So much for the seriousness of lying to Congress or breaking the law. Tejada did have an out though, he is from the Dominican Republic and you can buy steroids at any local pharmacy in the country as there is no law against its usage.
Canseco's class action suit contends that he isn't a Hall of Fame candidate because he is blackballed and McGwire, in Jose's opinion, has been blackballed too. Canseco claims he and others are missing income opportunities because they are not in the Hall of Fame. That one Canseco should take up with the Baseball Hall of Fame, the body that empowers baseball writers with 10 years of more experience on the beat to vote on which players belong in the baseball shrine. Why writers who are allegedly journalists should vote on an honor is a question that newspapers never really faced until recently when some papers publishers or editors found it unconscionable that writers voted on the very subjects that they were supposed to be covering. Former Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey wasn't too bothered with newspapers who barred writers from voting and once boasted that more writers voted for Hall of Famers after the edict came down from the papers.
Major League Baseball and baseball writers depend on one another and baseball writers do the right thing and promote the game as if it is part of their job.
The same writers who had an idea that players were juiced in the 1990s but gleefully went along the great home run race of 1998 between McGwire and Sosa which allegedly restored interest in the game after the 1994-95 players strike because it was in both the game and the writers best interest to prop baseball back to pre-1994 interest levels.
It did lead to some writers actually speculating that players were taking something and to a juvenile confrontation between then Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly and Sosa in the Chicago Cubs clubhouse where Reilly offered to take Sosa to some Chicago lab to get drug tested. Reilly apparently forgot that even baseball players have a right to privacy.
The more serious American sportscaster Bob Costas speculated that some players were juiced in various discussions as did the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell.
Reilly, who for some unknown reason is considered a must read writer, never got a response from Sosa. If Reilly had the goods on Sosa he should have done some investigative reporting and backed it up but he decided to showboat in a clubhouse. Reilly was not a serious journalist that day although it is questionable if Reilly has ever been in the same category of the Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Anderson or of Red Smith or Dick Schaap. Anderson would never have pulled a stunt like Reilly did with Sosa.
Sosa was a star and this is where the IOC comes in. The IOC could never get McGwire, Sosa or others to play in the Olympics because Major League Baseball was never going to suspend its season for two weeks for what essentially was a meaningless tourney for big leaguers. The IOC wants big names and used the lack of Olympic style drug testing as an excuse to throw baseball out of the games. Rogge wants big names; baseball isn't going to give him that. That is why baseball is not in the Olympics and the drug testing issue is the ruse.
The IOC reviewed baseball's application to get back into the Games earlier this week and while the New York Times Sosa story didn't help the cause, the IOC still wants stars not top rated minor leaguers even though that is what they get from FIFA for the football (soccer) tournament. But even the IOC delegates know it would not be wise to pick a fight with FIFA because there is no way they could win. The FIFA World Cup trumps the Olympics.
The IOC thinks it is a nation not a sports organization and why countries buy into the IOC is ludicrous and defies any reasonable explanation. The IOC has left behind billions of dollars of debt in host cities that wanted the two week athletic event and does so without any remorse. In fact, the way the IOC looks at it, it is an honor to host the Olympics although if you ask everyday people in Montreal, Sydney or Athens that might look at it a bit differently as the bill to host the Olympics takes generations to pay off.
The IOC went over the bids for the 2016 Summer Games from Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo this week in Copenhagen. On October 2, the IOC will announce which city gained the right to lose billions hosting the Games. London is finding out right now just how much it really costs to host the Games and the jubilation of winning the bid for the 2012 Olympic Games back in 2005 has faded as the real cost of the holding the Olympics is beginning to hit homes.
The London Games will be missing baseball and softball. For whatever reason softball was cut from the Summer Olympics program. The American women also did well in the Games, could it be that the women are being punished because Major League Baseball didn't play ball with Rogge? Only the delegates know for sure, but given the IOC's history it would not be a surprise if that was true.
Sports is a business, Canseco thinks he is being shut out, Sosa was outed and the IOC and others think athletes using banned performance enhancer drugs is merely cheating, not unlawful. Just another week in the toy store of life, sports.
eweiner@mcn.tv
By Evan Weiner
June 18, 2009
10:30 PM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- Jose Canseco is hopping mad and is ready to unleash a class action suit against anyone that seems to be connected with Major League Baseball, the owners and the players and anything that isn't nailed down. Canseco's feels he has been blackballed for writing a book about steroids use in baseball and that has cost him a chance at the Hall of Fame and a job in baseball. While Canseco was looking to get even with someone even though he admittedly used banned substances, the New York Times was publishing a report that was leaked by somebody that Sammy Sosa failed a performance enhancement drug test in 2003. The drug test administered to Sosa was supposed to be confidential and the result was not supposed to be released to the public. Canseco's suit and the Sosa revelation came as the International Olympic Committee reviewing the various cities that are ready to lose billions of dollars in a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Canseco, Sosa and the IOC are joined at the hip.
Canseco's tome on banned performance enhancing drug use in baseball brought to light steroid usage in baseball and it is because of alleged usage of banned performance enhancement drugs by baseball players, according to some in the know, that caused the International Olympic Committee to drop baseball from the quadrennial sports event known as the Olympics.
Canseco's book also spurred Congress to get off its collective duffs for one of the great shows of all time, the Major League Baseball comes clean hearing before a House committee on St. Patrick's Day 2005, where a parade of players including Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro hemmed and hawed about whether they used banned performance enhancing drugs before the Committee on Government Reform.
Congress, which among other things had two wars going at the time, took both the baseball owners and the players to the woodshed and shamed the two sides into toughening up their collective bargaining agreement in terms of drug testing but the St. Patrick's Day celebration of the great American game left one question that no one wants to answer.
If steroid usage in the United States is illegal, why weren't the players caught violating the collective bargaining agreement by testing positive for a banned substance looked upon as cheaters and not lawbreakers?
This is an important part of the entire banned performance enhancing drug usage problem that allegedly exists in sports and it gets back to whether athletes get special treatment. The International Olympic Committee's whole argument that baseball's drug policies aren't tough enough is laughable when you consider the IOC President Jacques Rogge was begging Italian law enforcement personnel to let the IOC police the Turin Olympic Village during the 2006 Winter Olympics because the athletes who might be caught with banned enhancers were really cheating and it was not a criminal offense.
What is even more troubling is how one law enforcement official in Harris County, Texas views athletes taking banned substances. "I’d like to see any players who have broken the rules face up to it publicly and do everything within their powers of persuasion to dissuade young people from using these drugs as opposed to sending them to prison. I think the truth has great powers for them. It’s got to be awful for them to know that they cheated and then perhaps committed perjury," said Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos to a reporter who did a story on her in the Houston Chronicle newspaper about two weeks ago.
The shame of being named a cheater triumphs breaking the law.
Some members of Congress are thinking about reviewing Sosa's testimony in light of the New York Times report. There is one player who got caught up in the Congressional hearings who pled guilty to lying to Congress. Houston's Miguel Tejada, who plays in Lykos' Harris County, didn't fess up to lawmakers about his anabolic steroids usage. Tejada could have faced a year in jail and deportation on February 11, 2009 when he appeared in court. Instead he got what amounted to a slap on the wrist as on March 26, he received probation.
So much for the seriousness of lying to Congress or breaking the law. Tejada did have an out though, he is from the Dominican Republic and you can buy steroids at any local pharmacy in the country as there is no law against its usage.
Canseco's class action suit contends that he isn't a Hall of Fame candidate because he is blackballed and McGwire, in Jose's opinion, has been blackballed too. Canseco claims he and others are missing income opportunities because they are not in the Hall of Fame. That one Canseco should take up with the Baseball Hall of Fame, the body that empowers baseball writers with 10 years of more experience on the beat to vote on which players belong in the baseball shrine. Why writers who are allegedly journalists should vote on an honor is a question that newspapers never really faced until recently when some papers publishers or editors found it unconscionable that writers voted on the very subjects that they were supposed to be covering. Former Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey wasn't too bothered with newspapers who barred writers from voting and once boasted that more writers voted for Hall of Famers after the edict came down from the papers.
Major League Baseball and baseball writers depend on one another and baseball writers do the right thing and promote the game as if it is part of their job.
The same writers who had an idea that players were juiced in the 1990s but gleefully went along the great home run race of 1998 between McGwire and Sosa which allegedly restored interest in the game after the 1994-95 players strike because it was in both the game and the writers best interest to prop baseball back to pre-1994 interest levels.
It did lead to some writers actually speculating that players were taking something and to a juvenile confrontation between then Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly and Sosa in the Chicago Cubs clubhouse where Reilly offered to take Sosa to some Chicago lab to get drug tested. Reilly apparently forgot that even baseball players have a right to privacy.
The more serious American sportscaster Bob Costas speculated that some players were juiced in various discussions as did the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell.
Reilly, who for some unknown reason is considered a must read writer, never got a response from Sosa. If Reilly had the goods on Sosa he should have done some investigative reporting and backed it up but he decided to showboat in a clubhouse. Reilly was not a serious journalist that day although it is questionable if Reilly has ever been in the same category of the Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Anderson or of Red Smith or Dick Schaap. Anderson would never have pulled a stunt like Reilly did with Sosa.
Sosa was a star and this is where the IOC comes in. The IOC could never get McGwire, Sosa or others to play in the Olympics because Major League Baseball was never going to suspend its season for two weeks for what essentially was a meaningless tourney for big leaguers. The IOC wants big names and used the lack of Olympic style drug testing as an excuse to throw baseball out of the games. Rogge wants big names; baseball isn't going to give him that. That is why baseball is not in the Olympics and the drug testing issue is the ruse.
The IOC reviewed baseball's application to get back into the Games earlier this week and while the New York Times Sosa story didn't help the cause, the IOC still wants stars not top rated minor leaguers even though that is what they get from FIFA for the football (soccer) tournament. But even the IOC delegates know it would not be wise to pick a fight with FIFA because there is no way they could win. The FIFA World Cup trumps the Olympics.
The IOC thinks it is a nation not a sports organization and why countries buy into the IOC is ludicrous and defies any reasonable explanation. The IOC has left behind billions of dollars of debt in host cities that wanted the two week athletic event and does so without any remorse. In fact, the way the IOC looks at it, it is an honor to host the Olympics although if you ask everyday people in Montreal, Sydney or Athens that might look at it a bit differently as the bill to host the Olympics takes generations to pay off.
The IOC went over the bids for the 2016 Summer Games from Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo this week in Copenhagen. On October 2, the IOC will announce which city gained the right to lose billions hosting the Games. London is finding out right now just how much it really costs to host the Games and the jubilation of winning the bid for the 2012 Olympic Games back in 2005 has faded as the real cost of the holding the Olympics is beginning to hit homes.
The London Games will be missing baseball and softball. For whatever reason softball was cut from the Summer Olympics program. The American women also did well in the Games, could it be that the women are being punished because Major League Baseball didn't play ball with Rogge? Only the delegates know for sure, but given the IOC's history it would not be a surprise if that was true.
Sports is a business, Canseco thinks he is being shut out, Sosa was outed and the IOC and others think athletes using banned performance enhancer drugs is merely cheating, not unlawful. Just another week in the toy store of life, sports.
eweiner@mcn.tv
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