scott's sis
on the phone is always a pleasure welcome to this program designed he is
the
sports and politics writer for the nation you could also uh... check em out
at edge of a sports dot com more foam on twitter at edge of sports welcome back
to it
a great idea spam
uh...
i primarily want to talk to you about uh...
marvin miller
word just passed away also want to touch on the hockey because i'm not here in
the office big hockey fan and he's afraid now to see any hockey dollars
here and i think you might be right fears are well founded
indeed all right let's start with marvin miller
uh... who
as marvin miller
or marvin miller passed away at ninety five years
odd just up the other day and he's
arguably
uh... the most influential
labor leaders since world war two
in the united states he was the head of the major league baseball players
association from
nineteen sixty six in nineteen eighty two
and he he really brought account and of
unionism
solidarity and likely manhood
uh... to the players of major league baseball
i mean this was are union before he went there from working with the steelworkers
that was an absolute tatters other typical player
uh... made between summer between six and seven thousand dollars a year
they had no
freedom of movement
they had no freedom to play where they wanted to play
they had no
freedom in terms of determining derek our trainers their doctors safety
and they really were treated alike chattel continuing public peacefully
paid players like mickey mantle was making
a hundred thousand dollars a year
but expect to be patridge play written by average i mean the overwhelming
majority of players
uh... took jobs in the off season oftentimes work and qua reader or a
typical manual labor charge to make ends meet
marvin miller get in there
p fights for workers' rights
he treated like a real unionist keith fights for free agency
and because of all of this
during his tenure
as head of the major league baseball players association
calories went up
astronomically immediate what hearing his ten year alone it went from the
average salary dvd
uh... under ten thousand dollars a year to being about two hundred and forty
thousand dollars a year
and kate over three million dollars a year
but in addition to that missus far more important
he changed with the sport
for everyone
he made
orders
interestingly rich even though they despise in so much that kept them out of
the hall of fame
past is past he still is not malval thing which is absolutely ludicrous
uh... but he did more than that and any chance that we had about sports it's a
big business
exporters something that expanded untuk most major cities in the country
export so global entity
and any chance of competitive balance in sports
is the result of marvin miller
unshackled n_b_a_ calls on the modern player
bringing free agency breeding freedom of movement and actually opening up the ice
to people how entertaining
sports can be suicide
wanted and we should say i mean
uh... you say that he helped the owners make the astronomical sums that they now
make
where were they in terms of when now
when when he became a head of the union
word the owners at that point i mean
the gulf between and try to get a sense of the gulf
love between what the priors were making and what the owners were making at that
time
and then tell us how he
uh... the owners sill reg
okay marvin miller group tired
and when marvin miller took over you're talking about split of
owners revenue the players revenue those overwhelmingly in favor of odors when we
were talking
but you can talk sports
and by the way that it's worth noting that marvin miller example influenced
every single major sport
which is why they were uh... tenements sent out yesterday from all of the major
sports
archives passing
but we're talking about ninety ten revenue share its we're talking eighty
five fifteen
we're talking about a situation where players are getting up to get into
or what the all product
and owning a sports team tended to be a family business
split something that you get back for a couple hundred thousand dollars down
and if you look back at what george steinbrenner for example put down in his
own money
to buy the eighties
in early nineteen seventies i mean it's comically ridiculous how little money it
took
actually buying into a major league franchise
and yet when marvin miller
took it over when marvin miller took over the union i'll what he did was he
worked on making sure that players would be able to go to different teams which
infuriated owners
who saw players
had a little more than chattel but by allowing players freedom of movement it
opened up the possibility of competitive balance in sports
and what your competitive balance
european interest and went to a fan interest
i've been in the world is your waster
at all this sudden these owners who have these teens a perk i don't like
hill-clarence swamp land that you had for decades
with the hope
the hope that they will grow i mean the eighty four losing money in the late
sixties
that for the whole truth and oh my gosh i hold on to the flop away and someday
it'll be decent
you go from that
pleading for the most valuable properties in the world with unseen
returns after their investors
yeah so let's also talk about what he meets us on this but it seems to me
that as baseball
uh... we then sab
all and then ultimately uh...
basketball
uh... perhaps a certain extent
a hockey is well
is this whole notion that
the players were no longer sort of like uh...
you know i'm illegally baseball cards are decades in some respects you know
um... that the uh... they were actually
there was actually a worker
capital dynamic that was going on here despite the fact i'll tell you know
uh... players may make a
a lot of money but you know those only ones that make it to to the major
leagues how did it also impose implicate the the other at the other sports
usually hugely
and like i said billy wanted that net n_b_a_ players as he should as well as
the morris smith
of the n_f_l_ players location both put out
well wishes because etc about after miller's pet ferret incredibly heartfelt
people's go online and read them i've because uh... they all get what miller
did
i mean miller and we did was he ripped from the eye to the player came from
paint as well a campaign often critically at someone stole the innocent
from fans
wildblue
eddie stole the innocent from players
guru
because what do you get which he opened their eyes to the fact that you get a
labor capital titanic
in sports
but this wasn't the case uh...
kate you're an adult play cricket game
you should feel which would actually be approached even if george meany dead at
the a_f_l_c_i_o_
which he didn't take you pat peace ball players ready athletes seriously the
actual workers
as marvin miller who's had one oh your workers because
you create wealth
your workers because your actions on that field
ideation
level all the money that goes into the sport
and without u player there's no more money
symbol of that
no one's gonna buy a ticket to watch somebody skate in an owner's box
until under marvin miller stating here you have numerous work stoppages
from nineteen sixty six in nineteen eighty two
it earned him caramel i'm mechanically
amongst the ownership ranks
and it's why in this is just the ultimate slap in the pacer bizarre world
of where people call it
the weekend in the major league baseball commissioner cooperative
marvin miller colleen's repeatedly negotiations
it in the baseball hall of fame to marvin miller is not
so i've talked to me a little bit about the reserve
that isn't what wide
what the implications were
which is flooded who had the uh...
third brought the case it uh... tell us about
yet you can't cover marvin miller story without telling the story of kurt wide
and marvin miller who i'd later keep several times elapsed time ali mentally
eighties
value-added his latest speak about kurt flood who passed away in nineteen ninety
nine
i met with the fifty six at the time the backs of arafat and curt flood flight
but without curt flood
you don't get any other
when you got a look at it like it marvin miller was the engine curt flood was
fifteen running through the engine the reserve clause of apart
of baseball contract going back
uh... to the end of the nineteen century end what it did blooded down players
to the team that originally signed up
and the only way you couldn't be on that pain anymore if if you are traded worth
eighteen thirty-one scrappy principle we don't know demand to know what your
services anymore
there is no offense that like you could signed a contract
the contract and
and then you could place somewhere else
where the victim and a trade
i mean that was just like i've heard about the idea of demanding a trade
and what curt flood it was
he's said to the week even in the latter that i will no longer be a well-paid
flavor
and those words were i mean baby opening shot for free agency and curt flood we
put all the way it's been court
with marvin miller ratified and request we lost
and when kurt flood came back in the major league baseball to somebody with a
lifetime to ninety day period one accountable clubs
he came back and quit for the washington senators and
he was a pariah even in its own rocco i mean that's out
out there he was
seem like even the other players didn't want anything to do with them
and he left the sport
but what it did though was it was one of those things where it is opened up a
discussion unheated and losing
kirkland
changed all of the dynamics that we're going on in baseball
in terms of l players saw themselves relative to owners
and then only a couple years later
uh... yet dave mcnally and indeed that use nets and they became
uh... the first players actually went free agency and want that happened i
mean huge explosion in calories
and with the explosion calories you also see this explosion the fan interest
and with the explosion in fan interest he speaks entrants then you see all
these things which i think were right to be very critical of with sports
which is like the sides of the athletic industrial complex influence
uh... eternal i waived that the ugly davies of marvin miller like the fact
like billions of dollars in public money going to stadiums
jet is really key who i've really put the genie out of the bottle and said
like lookout keeps his skin can be
uh... how much did well
the reaction to flood i mean it's an interesting
you know i don't know enough about that
the history of of baseball dot time adjust the reaction to flood sort of
seem surprising to me and i wonder if in if you if it wasn't also
in what was happening uh...
uh... socially at that time amin with the evite
filed suit in the late ah... sixties early seventies
now that's right it it was baseball nick's got understand it
baseball as the most conservative rights
evolve a sport
that were going on right now players tend to to come
from the american fast boat white player them black lips tend to come from the
american staff
and they tended to come from very small town now kurt water from oakland
california
now oakland in the late sixties was of course a hotbed
lenin he wasn't very much influenced by the nineteen sixties
by the black freedom struggle by the civil rights movement
at marvin miller was as well
answerable curt flood and marvin miller saw themselves as civil rights people
they call them come to the baseball version of what was happening in other
sports like bill russell in basketball mohammed ali in boxing
jim brown and football
but what a lot of sports have in common
they're not baseball right then you would look are you would look far and
wide
the fine baseball players
in the sixties were part of this error of athletic revolt
i meet just didn't happen did one player who was killed out in the iconoclastic
pitcher who will ball four
all my property of doubt about this about efforts for example bradley until
i can lift teammates and social issues
and you can see him that he could get nowhere
and it was very difficult time in one of those reasons that they are they're just
fewer in numbers of african-american players in baseball and that meant less
influence of the civil rights movement
in baseball but it was really also
that it was a very conservative support
or players had very little social power
so why would you rock the boat
in that context
and curt flood found himself
a pariah
in the early nineteen seventies now
today a lot of players praise his name because they they know what he did what
he faq replaced
but at the time it was very very difficult going for yeah i mean it seems
i mean it's hard for me
not to imagine that there wasn't a certain amount
and are not necessarily racism but at least stu some degree i mean you have
all these sort of social emancipation movements that are happening across
uh...
to the country
and uh...
it is hard to imagine any other speedo any sport more
likely to perceive the dirty hippies is dirty hippie he's
uh... that you guys you know baseball guys
and jack
it gets really right i mean the e-ticket so funny can lead me we'll lead look
back in nineteen seventy-two that error that was the era of kurt flood
but nineteen seventy two
and out of court off of the area in nixon's silent majority waiting forty
nine states
painted and may not remember that a yearly offense so much of the u_s_ labor
movement the official move in
pulling away from the government
right lagging only won one st so
then we ask yourself a question it's like
okay i'd give this country in seventy two difficult seems rare radical
software richard nixon went forty nine states
where whereas marvin miller politically wear skirt what politically
well there with the one st
those were their politics
accountability you can imagine and when you transplant that on that conservative
uh...
element like a major league baseball locker room
uh... how difficult it was burkhard playing with a lot better off in a
different sport that's for sure what do you think the uh... the chances now
uh... miller ended up in the
uh... oli yet and it made me a little activity would get
any authorities for groucho marx wine like never one of a lot i want any club
that i have from like me remember
so i think the kids are very good
as dub it the veterans committee which would vote um... for marvin miller lite
as they become comprised overwhelmingly of players who benefited from free
agency
i think you getting very easily but honestly like our people were to what
reggie jackson said yesterday like if you'd like work are they could actually
kill morgan said that he fed look i i don't care if you get to know i wouldn't
care if he got in a year ago he should have got in thirty years ago we would've
had thirty years to enjoy it with the family
exactly
well uh... appreciate your talking to us about that they give me a brief update
for the sake of uh... man i have been hockey fan
uh... and probably
for years myself
what is he have any hockey what's going on with the with hockey
advocate revenge against marvin miller
that's what's happening and i keep you have a unified lockout strategy by
ownership something that would have been unheard of
and marvin miller time where they went on strike for they were locked out
in the problem though is that the owners art actually doing very well in hockey
get a minority of them are doing very badly value-added actually a battle
between the owners that are making money in order to their losing money and their
children to caballero economic crisis on the back of players by extracting salary
back from them which players had just given back a few years ago and when they
adopted a hard cap in the entire season was canceled sake to do to capture they
try to head a land speed record now pat fagan rappel their fan base and and
that's what happened bill went and exports is way too beautiful i'd taken
put owners in charge of so that's part of the problem is that when you put all
the things i did something like that to placate my tits in reverse
anything that touches turns to crap and they're turning out to get crap right
now
it's feels like uh... the the strength of labor
earn in the context of sports is sort of uh...
obviously power all of this i guess is no reason why shouldn't but uh... that
uh...
what we're seeing in the in terms of the broader society not necessarily it seems
like on a
ana dollars level but in terms of the way that they perceive themselves in
relationship to uh...
to the owners and how
how much unity there is maybe
now absolutely i mean since two thousand ten the number of walked out to the
united states
i have doubled uh... it's a pit the product of
uh... economic crisis an austerity enemies to be the third rail of labor
management relations get here you just locked the doors
and keep your workers out
in so many people who are now supports owners
uh... they're not like the old paid for with the family business handed down i'm
makes people who've made billions of dollars in other industries usually
finance
committed by me you buy a major key mid-day they're only look at the bottom
line to become from industries that are employing walkouts
indicated an effective tool because they win at the end when they get more money
unfortunately from that leads out it's not just players
but people like mad expands its people who work at the stadium
it it it it's a real tragedy especially because at least chemotherapy public
funding of stadiums why do we really need owners again andy green bay packers
has shown the door actually need owner step pro sports
and i think they should be very very careful with how much
they're they're they're basing off their fan base is and all of the sports
let's get rid of the owners
that's what i'm saying
design green bay could win a super bowl that way
while i'd look at the green day good for america
uh... i mean it
story of uh...
maybe too much dairy products ah...
i general i would say naps filter uh... let's do it
uh... designer gemma
at edge of sports dot com
and of course uh... at the nation magazine always a pleasure really
appreciate you taking the time
met with our slogan should be not just lactose intolerant followed a renewed
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