MILLER, Marvin Julian

(b. 14 April 1917 in New York City), labor economist and former head of the Major League Baseball Players' Association (MLBPA) who built the organization into one of the strongest labor unions in the United States and established the modern concept of free agency.

Born in the Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City, and raised in Brooklyn, Miller was one of two children born to Alexander Miller, a salesman in a women's shoe store, and Gertrude Wald Miller, a schoolteacher. Both of his parents were the children of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Miller attended elementary school at P.S. 153 in Brooklyn, graduating in 1929. He then went to James Madison High School in Brooklyn, where he credits "a good economics teacher" with awakening within him an interest in the subject. After high school, Miller majored in education at Ohio's Miami University, planning eventually to become an economics teacher himself. After his junior year at Miami, he transferred to New York University, from which he graduated in 1938 with a B.S. in economics.

Fresh out of college, Miller worked first as a clerk for the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C. In 1940 he returned to New York City and a job as an investigator for the city's Department of Welfare. He next worked as a labor economist and disputes hearing officer, serving for three years during World War II with the National War Labor Relations Board. Leaving government employment behind, Miller worked first for the International Association of Machinists and then the United Auto Workers. In 1950 Miller accepted a position as staff economist for the United Steelworkers of America, and by 1966 he was the chief economist and assistant to the president, as well as the union's leading negotiator.

When a committee of ballplayers approached Miller in 1966 offering him a job as the MLBPA's first full-time executive, he found it impossible to resist. Raised by a father who was a staunch New York Giants fans (although as a boy Miller had always rooted for the hometown Brooklyn Dodgers), he was a lifelong baseball enthusiast. Miller was the players' third choice for the position, as they had been turned down by their first two candidates, but this turned out to be an incredibly fortuitous turn of events that put Miller in the driver's seat at the loosely organized union. With a union treasury of $5,400, he began to put together an extremely powerful labor union, one that in time would serve as a model for others.

An accomplished bargainer, Miller drew on all the lessons he had learned while working for the steelworkers, autoworkers, and machinists. One of his first goals was to renegotiate the standard players' contract, which he branded "one of the worst labor documents." When team owners threw up roadblocks, refusing to provide accurate information on players' salaries, Miller selected a few union members from each team to find out and anonymously report the salary of all the other players on that team. Only two years into his job with the MLBPA, Miller managed to raise the minimum salary for players from $6,000 to $10,000, the first such increase negotiated in more than twenty years. But Miller was only getting started.

When management balked at the union's request to conduct union business in the locker rooms, Miller on one occasion held a union meeting in the outfield of a ballpark. In 1973 he won for players the right to arbitration to resolve grievances. He also managed to negotiate a pension plan for players that is considered one of the best such benefit packages in the United States.

Miller's most enduring contribution to the game undoubtedly is free agency. In 1975 he managed to wrest from management an agreement giving players the right to sign with other teams once their contracts with their old teams were up. But Miller was careful not to push too hard. Well aware that unlimited free agency would overburden the market and hold down players' salaries, he offered owners this "compromise"—players would win the right to free agency only after playing for six years in the majors. In one fell swoop, Miller had managed to mold a labor system that ended forever the owners' career control over players, regulated the pool of talent, and provided established major leaguers with a degree of security they had never before enjoyed.

In Miller's view, the key to free agency was a flaw in the language of the standard player contract. Players were bound to their teams through the reserve clause, allowing a team to renew a player's contract in perpetuity. Section 10A of the contract, which spelled out the reserve clause, read in part, "the Club may tender to the Player a contract for the term of that year by mailing the same to the Player. If prior to the March 1 next succeeding said January 15, the Player and the Club have not agreed upon the terms of such contract, then on or before 10 days after said March 1, the Club shall have the right…to renew this contract for the period of one year." Miller's reading of the contract language convinced him that it amounted to only a one-year option for the club. If a player did not sign a contract, the club, according to 10A, could renew him "for the period of one year." But after that year, the contractual obligation between player and team would be satisfied.

Miller desperately needed a player to test his interpretation of 10A. He found such a test case in pitcher Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who became the first true free agent after an arbitrator's ruling on 23 December 1975 confirmed Miller's interpretation of Section 10A. Also declared a free agent in the arbitrator's ruling was pitcher Dave McNally, who actually had retired from the game in June 1975 rather than sign a one-year contract with the Montreal Expos. In an earlier challenge to the legality of the reserve clause, St. Louis Cardinals player Curt Flood had gone to court after he was traded without his knowledge to the Philadelphia Phillies. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against Flood 5 to 3. However, the Flood case paved the way for a system of arbitration to settle such disputes between players and club owners. Other areas in which Miller fought hard for the interests of ballplayers include the division of revenues from licensing and broadcasting and steps taken to make the game safer. The master negotiator successfully bargained for padded outfield walls, better-defined warning tracks, and safer locker rooms.

Veteran sports broadcaster Red Barber once called Miller "one of the two or three most important men in baseball history." What could this mild-mannered labor leader from the Bronx have done to warrant such reverence from fans and players alike? After all, he never hit a home run, nor led his team to victory in a pennant race or World Series. In fact, he never played professional baseball, but his crowning achievement has transformed the game forever and will live on long after Miller himself is laid to rest. As head of the baseball players' union from 1966 through 1983, Miller was responsible for establishing the concept of free agency. In the spring of 1972, he led players out on a 13-day strike, eventually winning from owners an agreement to contribute about $1 million more each year to the players' pension fund. A tough negotiator, Miller in 1975 managed to win from club owners recognition of each player's right to sign employment agreements with other teams once his contractual obligations with the old team concluded.

As a tribute to Miller and his contributions to professional baseball as we know it today, sportswriters, players, and many fans have long called for his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Of Miller, National Broadcasting Company (NBC) sportscaster Bob Costas said, "There is no nonplayer more deserving of the Hall of Fame," with the possible exception of Branch Rickey, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1967.

Perhaps the best insight into Miller's years as executive director of the MLBPA can be found in Miller's own Whole Different Ball Game: The Sport and Business of Baseball (1991). In it, Miller details how he helped to shape the MLBPA into a strong and powerful union and also covers the negotiations that led to the establishment of free agency. Miller also wrote the foreword to Man on Spikes (1998), an excellent novel tracking the triumphs and tragedies of a single baseball player. An outsider's view of Miller's years as head of the players' union is John Helyar, Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball (1994).

Don Amerman