November 15, 2007

SCOTT BORAS IS THE EVIL PROGENY BORN FROM YEARS OF OWNER INCOMPETENCE AND GREED

       Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

       The first meeting took place shortly before Christmas in 1965.  The meeting involved Marvin Miller, who had spent a quarter century in labor relations battling corporations and industries on behalf of the working class, and assorted major league baseball players, intent on halting what they perceived to be a great injustice perpetrated against them by baseball owners.  Miller was the assistant to the president of the Steelworkers Union of America and had built a reputation as a bold and resourceful thinker unafraid of big business--and was just the sort of man the players viewed as being capable of ending the decades of indentured servitude.  For his part Miller, a baseball fan, was aware of the mistreatment of the players, but within the first few minutes understood that the players had no concept of just how difficult a fight lay ahead of them. 

      At that time Miller was approaching a crossroads in his career.  The Steelworkers Union was fracturing and he was enduring what he termed “the most stressful sessions in my sixteen years with the union”.  There were offers in place, however.  Safe, respectable offers from Harvard University and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  If he chose to he could, in effect, put his feet up while earning a princely sum in a position that seemed to carry very little stress.  But the plight of the ballplayers piqued his interest even though the players showed a horrifying lack of insight into the proceedings—the players believed having former vice president (at the time) Richard Nixon as general counsel would excite Miller as opposed to making the labor lawyer laugh.   What was known to most--that Nixon was in the pockets of big business and was the personal friend of several baseball owners--was unbeknownst to the players.

       The players, however naïve they were in these matters, were tired of being lied to by the owners and fed up with having these lies jammed down their throats and then ordered to say, “thank you sir may I have some more”.  Any player who had previously attempted to fight the owners had been blackballed from the game.  The players knew they had to be careful.  They formed a committee in the winter of 1965 to search for a full-time executive director to help establish a players association and that was what brought them to this prospective union leader.   The committee was represented that day by former Philadelphia Phillie and future hall of famer Robin Roberts, present day Phillie and later U.S. Senator Jim Bunning, and Chicago Cub Harvey Kuenn, and they believed that Miller gave them their best chance at procuring a solid pension plan in upcoming negotiations.    They also believed, however, that in order to gain the vote of their fellow members of their conservative minded proletariat during the nominations they needed to assign Miller a conservative thinker—Nixon.  It was then that Miller explained the plan’s impossibility, thanked the players, and left.  

       They were also unaware that management’s funding of their neophyte organization (owners drew money earned from the All-Star Game to pay for the association and, in effect, keep the players quiet) was against the laws of the United States.  The players were having crimes committed against them, and didn’t know it. 

       The players, all players, were frightened as they entered the negotiations that year.  The owners had held swords over their heads since the sport’s inception and the players felt that even the slightest inroad could be easily retracted if the owners decided to seek retribution.  The players feared that if causing trouble might cost them any chance of a fair deal, and they were worried that if angered enough the owners would shut off the faucet that had been spouting nickels at them since professional baseball had been established.   

      Eventually, though it didn’t come easy, Miller was named president of the players association.  That was just the beginning for Miller, as he had to first quell the fears of the players before he could go about bringing fairness to the business of baseball.

       After the 1969 season ended the St. Louis Cardinals, believing that they needed to improve their roster to continue as a National League championship contender, traded star centerfielder Curt Flood to the cellar dwelling Philadelphia Phillies.  Flood, believing that an American citizen had certain rights filed a lawsuit alleging that the reserve clause in major league baseball (a clause that bound a player to the organization for life) was unconstitutional.  Flood was told before he began the fight that the likelihood of his winning was nil—that the courts had already ruled baseball was not subject to anti-trust laws because it was sport not trade.  Flood contended that since he was without a contract for the following year he was, in effect, a free agent, and the Cardinals shouldn’t be allowed to uproot his life and send him to a team, for which he did not want to play, and a city, in which he did not want to live.   

      What rights do you think you have, young man? 

       Flood was told by everyone on either side of the case that his pursuit for justice was futile.  But for Curt Flood it wasn’t about winning, it was about publicizing the story and perhaps making the first steps toward righting a long lasting wrong.  In the end both sides won.  Baseball was able to convince the Supreme Court that it was still sport and not trade.  Flood brought to light the indignity of decades of “involuntary servitude”--of how baseball clubs had complete and utter control of a player for his entire career.  It wasn’t sport at all—it was vicious, demeaning, prejudicial and controlling—and it was trade.

       The Supreme Court believed that the reserve clause was wrong but they were not capable of making new law so they passed it back down to the particulars and encouraged them to work an agreement.  The owners weren’t interested in fairness; they wanted complete control and argued that baseball could not succeed without it.  The owners responded to requests by the players to negotiate a new deal by shoving them up against the proverbial wall and, as the 1972 season was about to begin, forced a strike.  The players were beginning to exert independence and the owners needed to break that habit, and also break the association.  They failed at both.  The players waited and negotiated and then agreed on a plan that was better than the one they had before, and it set the stage for the landmark case that would alter baseball economics forever.

       Pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, having learned the intricacies of baseball labor laws from the Flood case and from the two-week strike, played the entire1975 season without a contract.  After that season ended they contended that having played the year without a signed contract freed them from the almighty grasp of the reserve clause, from their present owners, and made them free agents.  Arbitrator Peter Seitz changed history.  He ruled that the players had succeeded in their plan and granted Messersmith and McNally free agency.   As he signed off on the final verdict Seitz, an arbitrator hired by the owners, was fired.  His decision though held up under appeal with the federal district court. 

       The decision obviously did not sit well with baseball’s hierarchy and sparked years of ferocious antipathy by the owners, in their futile attempts to regain complete control against the players who were simply attempting to better their working environment.

       What followed was years of baseball owners attempting to pressure the players by pushing through the constitution and trying to intimidate the association and overwhelm the courts.  They lost each and every battle.  The strength of the players association fed off each victory and, like a giant, grew to interminable height and weight.  With millions of dollars suddenly available agents began to appear across the baseball landscape.  

       The terminators (agents), rise of the machines--next week.

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