Unspeakably Asinine: Hall of Fame Denies Marvin Miller Entry, Picks Bowie Kuhn Instead
In an incredible move, the Baseball Hall of Fame has denied entry to 90-year-old Marvin Miller, who built the baseball players’ union into one of the moist successful unions in all of labor history, while at the same time admitting former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, a buffoon who did more harm than good. (Miller is pictured above left with several players concerning the Messersmith free agency case, and at the above right with Curt Flood concerning Flood’s Supreme Court challenge to the reserve clause.)
Today’s astronomical baseball salaries have made many forget that for 100 years baseball players were treated terribly. Owners had all of the power in the relationship, in part because of the reserve clause, which mandated that a player could only play for one team unless they traded or released him. With almost no negotiating power, players were vastly underpaid in relation to the value they brought to the industry. Prior to the union era, many retired players lived in poverty or scraped by on menial jobs.
That began to change in 1966 when Marvin Miller, formerly one of the leaders of the Steelworkers’ union, became the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association. The union faced a hostile press, hostile, idiotic baseball fans, and some of the wealthiest people in the country, the club owners. In 1972, the owners tried to roll back the already meager pension the baseball players received, and it led to the first strike in baseball history. The owners sought to provoke the strike in order to break the nascent union, and Miller himself thought there was little the players would be able to do about it, at least in the short term.
The Players’ Association–though poorly funded, inexperienced and manned mostly by very young men–stood its ground, forced the owners to back down, and won the strike. Once a small, completely ineffective organization, the union stunned the sports world by racking up win after win, culminating in their victorious 1981 baseball strike to protect their right to free agency.
By contrast, then-baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn did everything he could to resist the union and reforms and to keep the players under the thumb of the owners. Even as a reactionary owners’ man, he was in no way worthy of the Hall of Fame, because he was a mediocrity who was largely over his head in the job.
(To be fair, Kuhn does deserve credit on one important issue–he helped get the Hall of Fame to admit Negro League stars as full members of the Hall, even though the black players didn’t technically meet the Hall’s eligibility standards because they hadn’t been allowed to play because of segregation.)
During Miller’s era as leader of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association (1966-1982), the average players’ salary rose from $19,000 to $241,000 a year, and Miller won every strike/labor action during that period, including 1969, 1972, 1981 and others.
To learn more about the recent Hall of Fame vote, see the Sporting News‘ article Veterans panel omits Miller in Hall picks (12/3/07).
Also, see my blog posts The ‘Best Interests of the Child’ Standard, Marvin Miller, and the Baseball Players’ Union, The Fatherhood Movement & Underdog Social Movements in History (Part II: The Rise of the Players’ Union), and Judging the Success of a Movement by How Well Its Beneficiaries Remember It.
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