Marvin Miller

Curt Flood with Marvin Miller 1970

"Few men, if any, made as significant an impact as Marvin Miller on Major League Baseball. You don't have to like what he did to recognize that impact. The game today is what it is in great part because of what Miller did as executive director of the players union from 1966 through 1983." ........Murray Chass

**Miller say No to the Hall of Fame, May 2008

In December of 2007 the Baseball Hall of Fame (Shame) had a special election for Executives voted on by a Veterans Committee for induction into the Hall.

As Muray Chass with the New York Times wrote before the vote, this committee works for most of the candidates. For one man however it makes no sense, "No one on the ballot has made as great an impact on baseball as (Marvin) Miller. His efforts changed the game forever."

Marvin Miller was the players' labor leader from 1966 to 1983 and was the mastermind that brought baseball into the new era of Free-Agency and for the players, liberation from the "reserve clause" that bound a player to a single team for life.

The special Veterans Committee does not work for Miller. As he wisely put it, "They are not a jury of my peers but a jury of my antagonists."

Murry Chass's article after the vote began "The National Baseball Hall of Fame has become a national joke."

Adding insult to injury, the Veterans Committee elected the Commissioner during Marvin Miller's tenure as head of the players union, Bowie Kuhn. He's the guy who predicted the demise of baseball with the beginning of the Free Agent era. Kuhn said free agency, "would mean the loss to bankruptcy of the entire American League as well as several teams in the National League."

The unfortunate, "embarrassing" vote by the Veterans Committee and the exclusion of Marvin Miller drew many responses including an Op-Ed piece (to the right) in the New York Times by Fay Vincent a former Baseball Commissioner.