Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Deadspin: The FBI vs. Marvin Miller: How America Commie-Baited A Baseball Hero
(deadspin.com)
We’ve obtained Miller’s FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request. You can read the entire thing below, 82 pages of information gleaned from Miller’s co-workers and friends, from FBI informants, from the trash of someone Miller may or may not have even known. All of this was done with the goal of determining if Marvin Miller was working toward the overthrow of the American government. Spoiler alert: He was not.
Maybe they confused him with Arthur Miller?
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1 2 3 >Miller opposed additional drug testing other than for reasonable cause due to fourth amendnment reasons. The Quest/CDT imbroglio and leaking of medical information proved him correct.
He also opposed additional testing because he did not believe that opening a duly negotiated CBA was a good idea - owners may try to constantly add items via public pressure and change already negotiated items.
If minor leaguers want a union, they should organize and form one (as I believe college athletes should) under NLRB standards. As executvie director of the MLBPA, Miller could only by law negotiate or intervene on subjects related to his membership (current players and former players if the issue dealt with their playing days).
And yes, Miller was smart enough to allow owners to restrict free agency - which drove the salaries of all players past year three in the majors higher. Pure free agency (which writers for The economist have in their choice of employers) would have caused too much uncertainty and turnover in rosters on a yearly basis and been poor for the game.
If The Economist believes that a minimum MLB salary for a rookie of ovwer $ 400,000 is a travesty, they've lost their minds!
The 4th Amendment doesn't apply to drug testing of employees, or to any purely private situation of search. You can't claim 4th Amendment protection when your landlord uses his right of inspection and finds the pot growing in your basement. It's only a protection against Gov't activity.
Piazza could afford to take that chance since his family was rich, yes. But there's no reason a "next Mike Piazza" would not find his way to the majors. It's true he would not be drafted as the draft is only 50 rounds now, but he could still sign as a free agent, or else go to one of the independent leagues.
And someone with Mike Piazza's talent unleashed on independent baseball? It would not take long for a team to discover him.
personally I think minor leaguers* SHOULD be part fo te sam ecolelctive bargaining unit as MLB players
*not true "minor leagues"- like the Indy leagues, but MLB's farm clubs- the whole business of MLB "buying" so and so's contact from a AAA team has long been a sham- every player on Syracuse's or Columbus's roster was really signed by an MLB team, their salary and any bonus money is paid by an MLB team, their managers and coaches all work for that MLB team, etc.
I will say that the way all the sports unions throw the draft picks under the bus at every chance is pretty deplorable.
To quote Miller:
"An employer can do this (test) , and a union can agree to do this, as part of collective bargaining," Miller said, pointing out the difference between private industry and government when it comes to drug testing. "But Congress can't. No government agency can conduct a search without first going to court and swearing before a judge that there's a probable cause to believe that player 'X' is guilty. Until the judge gives that order, the person can't be searched."
Congress' reaction:
House Government Reform Committee chief counsel, Keith Ausbrook said the committee believed the bill would be found constitutional because "there is a compelling government interest in the problem" of steroid use by professional athletes and school-age athletes. "Under the Fourth Amendment," he said, "if it's the only way to deter the use, it might not have to be so compelling." He added, "We think the record shows there's compelling interest in doing it to protect the integrity of the game and protect the health of players and children who look up to them."
Truly chilling.
AROM--Perhaps I should have been clearer. The point is that for every Piazza--that is to say, a late-blooming talent unrecognized in his youth who finally gets to MLB--there are probably many players who drop out along the way, because it doesn't look like they have any clear chance of making The Show and minor league life sucks.
zack--In the 1960s and 70s, Miller was leading the players, not following them. If he'd only reflected the preexisting consensus view, the reserve clause never would have fallen. Even now, I imagine that a full vote of MLB players would prioritize issues like the minimum salary over pushing the record contracts ever-higher, since there are more minimum-salary players than $100 million players.
Are there any lawyers or legal analysts on record supporting the bolded part?
The idea that kids choose to play a sport or not play a sport based on hypothetical future earnings (or working conditions) is unsupported by any evidence. If this was true, very few kids would be playing sports like soccer and lacrosse, few kids under 6'2" would be playing basketball, etc.
Agreed. I've always been astonished that the minimum salary isn't a bigger issue in MLB and other pro sports.
Absolutely not. There is zero chance of a minor league player winning a Duty of Fair Representation claim against MLBPA. A Union has an obligation to bargain for members of the bargaining unit which, in open shops, includes both members of the union and the people holding the same or similar positions working for the same employer performing the same jobs. They absolutely do not have an obligation or even an opportunity to bargain on behalf of "all workers in its industry." To suggest that the MLBPA has an obligation to players in the minors working for different employers under different circumstances is to badly misread decades of labor law.
Since they are British, they know nothing about baseball - hence my comment. /sarcam alert
No. The NLRB recognized bargaining unit is (per MLBPA website):
"All players, managers, coaches and trainers who hold a signed contract with a Major League club are eligible for membership in the Association.'"
Coke to dlf.....
If minor leaguers want a union, they should organize and form one (as I believe college athletes should) under NLRB standards. As executive director of the MLBPA, Miller could only by law negotiate or intervene on subjects related to his membership (current players and former players if the issue dealt with their playing days).
Rosenheck basically argues that this tack is unrealistic, and that MM should have peremptorily organized them for their own good. His argument is, "well, major leaguers had absolutely no concept of collective bargaining back then, but Miller came in and raised their consciousness, so how come he didn't do the same for minor leaguers and young players? He coulda/shoulda, but he didn't." (Some of the old-time Prospectusians also hold this opinion that Miller kissed off the minor leaguers by not doing what was best for them.)
Joe Kehoskie--It's not a question of whether kids choose to play a sport, it's whether they choose to pursue it as a career. Basketball and football don't face the same problem, since there's no dues-paying period to endure--you get a free college education, and then get drafted by the top league when you're done.
dlf--I was using shorthand. That said, minor league players do perform the same job as major leaguers, and they don't Really work for separate employers, since the farm teams are controlled by their MLB parents. I don't know whether there are any precedents about the independence of minor and major league clubs. But in the end, I agree with you--probably the biggest reason no minor leaguer has tried to challenge the MLBPA is that the odds would be stacked against them. That doesn't exempt Miller from criticism. He represented the narrow interests of (in my view, a subset of) his union's members, which might make him a good negotiator, but doesn't make him a great champion of the working man.
Bob Tufts--Yes, I'm aware that the "major league" in MLBPA limits membership to major leaguers. My exchange with dlf addresses this point.
Greg Franklin--Thanks for summarizing my position accurately.
If that's his position, it's an absurd one, as Miller already had more than enough on his plate, the labor wars weren't truly won by the MLBPA until late in Miller's tenure (if not after Miller retired), and minor leaguers vastly outnumber major leaguers, which means they could dominate internal union matters, hijack CBA talks, etc., if organized into a single MLBPA.
At best, the minor leaguers would have their own MiLBPA, but attempts to organize one of those has been like herding cats. Minor leaguers historically have had no interest in a union because (1) they don't expect to be minor leaguers for long, and (2) players who didn't get big bonuses don't want to pay union dues.
The idea that top-flight soccer players don't make very good money is hilarious.
No, minor leaguers aren't challenging the MLBPA because they aren't members of the MLBPA or eligible to become members of the MLBPA so long as they're not on a 40-man roster. And, yes, it does exempt Miller from criticism, because the only place in which minor leaguers are a "subset" of the MLBPA's members is in the counterfactual you've created.
The idea that potential major leaguers are quitting baseball because of the prospect of bus rides from Auburn to Batavia or because of the working conditions at minor league facilities that are palatial compared to just 20 years ago is entirely unsupported by any evidence. The explosion of independent leagues shows there's a surplus of players willing to bear any burden if it means they can continue playing baseball, even when they know their chances of ever reaching Double-A, let alone MLB, are probably zero.
A top American athlete has a better chance of making big money in the U.S. in soccer than he does in MLB or the NBA, NFL, or NHL? Not buying it.
Likewise, I'm not buying that millions of 7-year-olds are choosing to play soccer because they believe their career prospects and athletic skills are more in alignment in soccer than they would be in other sports.
I don't see what the existence of independent leagues proves. Just because there are some people who are willing to play baseball professionally with no chance of making the majors doesn't mean that there aren't also other people, who might be good athletes, but who would only play baseball professionally if they had a credible shot of making the majors or if minor league life were more palatable. This is a counterfactual, so I obviously can't tell you how many of these players there are. But it seems strange to suggest that there's not a single person who would play minor league ball for a six-figure salary but not for $5,000 a year, or that not one person in that group would eventually blossom into a major leaguer.
So it wasn't enough that Marvin Miller organized 800 ML players into a union at a time when ML players had few rights, and then spent two decades fighting tooth and nail on their behalf. Miller was also supposed to organize ~5,000 minor league players, 95 percent of whom would never play a day in the big leagues, into their own union or into second-class members of the MLBPA. That's sort of like saying Jonas Salk isn't praiseworthy because his cure for cancer never panned out.
You're simply dead wrong about the minor leaguers. Also, you cite the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which governs labor relations between the federal government and employees, not private industry. (The principle you cite in the article generally applies to private industry as well, but it's not on point because minor leaguers aren't part of the bargaining unit. There's a distinction between union vs. non-union members, and bargaining unit vs. non-bargaining unit. They're not the same thing.)
Players with 0-3 years of service obviously have it worse than Super Two and above, but that's nothing unusual in a union context. Plus, one person's sellout is another person's compromise. It makes sense that the early focus of the MLBPA was on older members who had less time remaining in the big leagues.
Why would minor leaguers have to challenge the MLBPA at all? The only thing stopping them from organizing their own union is their potential members' lack of interest.
So in your hypothetical world, players who spent from age 5 to age 18 (high school) or age 21-22 (college) playing baseball mostly on crappy fields and riding crappy buses and vans and did so for fun (T-ball through high school) or for a (likely partial) scholarship (college), suddenly blanch at the idea of playing baseball professionally — i.e., for pay — in great stadiums, with great equipment, in front of thousands of fans, and with the chance of making the major leagues and becoming fabulously rich. Sorry, but I'm not buying it.
In America? No, they don't really. MLS minimum salary is $40k. The median salary is about $80k, the average about $180k IIRC. Only 57 players make more than $250k (arbitrary endpoint!), and many of those 57 are either foreign players or Americans who played overseas prior to MLS (or played in MLS, then went overseas and then came back), meaning that home grown players don't get paid very much. Sure it's more than you or I make, but in the landscape of professional sports the MLS pays most of its players minor league/lower level wages.
American players that play in foreign leagues for the most part either have dual citizenship or are/were internationals and make a lot more money than they would in MLS.
give me a break. criticizing the guy for not handling all professional ballplayers is weak sauce.
Most high school players do play for fun. And very young players don't have the opportunity cost of a career doing something else that adults do.
Guapo, my bad on NLRB vs. FLRA--I'll correct that. But can you explain in more detail what I"m dead wrong about? The work rules for players in affiliated minor leagues are determined by the MLB collective bargaining agreement--it's the MLB club that pays the signing bonus after the draft. Right?
Most of the players in the MLS are not top-flight players. The few that are, are making very good money. The other American players that are top flight, are in Europe, making very good money. The baseball equivalent of the MLS is the PCL, not MLB or even NPB.
You keep trying to implicitly include all laborers within an industry in the bargainin unit, something that is contrary to well established law. Miller had a legal obligation (Duty of Fair Representation) to seek the best possible outcome for members of the bargaining unit, here clearly defined as players on the 40 man roster plus trainers, etc. If he bargains away one dime of free agent contract value in exchange for one million dollars of benefit to the minor leaguers, the union would be liable to its members for a breach of that duty. He could not have negotiated for benefits for people outside the bargaining unit unless he could have redefined the membership in said bargaining unit. While doing so is theorectically possible, I find it hard to believe that it would have been politically possible in the 60s and 70s when the major league players were negotiating for things as basic as padding on the outfield walls.
I'd even go further so as to argue that his responsibility lay with the then current membership even at the possible detriment (as opposed to non-advancement) of their minor league and amateur brethren.
I thought that was a style manual requirement or something.
Edited to clean up a little
Aside from the rising tide clearly having raised all ships (compare signing bonuses now with those in 1966), if you're running a union, you want new members coming in hungry. Big signing bonuses are increasingly a detriment to the MLBPA, as players who used to go to arbitration over $50,000 differences are now often so rich by the time they get to MLB that they're signing away their arbitration years and even some free-agent years with increasing frequency.
I'm sure the bolded part is correct, but if top-flight American players have to move overseas to maximize their earnings, that has to count as a negative vis-a-vis working conditions — working conditions being part of Dan's theory that potential MLB players are quitting baseball because of the working conditions in the U.S. minor leagues.
I could suggest the contrary: because the players are financially secure, they are more willing to roll the dice for the monster follow-up contract. If you offer a kid who has made major league minimums -- good money, but not enough to retire your great great grandkids -- a eight or nine figure contract, he'll jump, but if you make that same offer to someone with a $5m signing bonus in hand, he may shoot for the moon. I doubt we could find anything other than anecdotes on either side of that set of assumptions.
Your theory makes perfect sense, and is probably something the union hoped for, but there just doesn't seem to be a lot of "rolling the dice" in MLB these days. More and more young players are signing long-term deals, and the ML FA market seems to be getting weaker and weaker.
I haven't looked at the numbers in several years, but as of a few years ago, MLB players had actually given back quite a few points of revenue relative to the splits 10 or 20 years ago. Despite all the talk about ML player salaries being higher than ever, the average ML player was making almost $1 million less than he would have under the prior splits.
As far as your second paragraph, is that a lack of negotiating strength cause by satiated players, or a direct result of the soft cap from the luxury tax / revenue sharing agreements which all agreed were major wins for the Owners during the CBA negotiations a few years back?
Not necessarily, MLS is the highest level of soccer most of these players can realistically play (from a technical standpoint, not a talent one). Work permits (UK) and foreign player limits (Italy and Spain for example) restrict many players from moving overseas, MLS also has foreign player restrictions. Xenophobia is rampant in soccer. For the leagues that are less restrictive of players, the teams aren't going to spend the time and money to scout non-international players in America when they have ample supply in their backyard.
This is pretty much entirely incorrect. Work permits and homegrown player rules only matter if the players are not talented. That is the only limiting factor. The clubs in the top European leagues have more than enough money to scout whoever they want. There are various American players even in lower leagues in Europe. The only correct statement is the last sentence, which goes to my point that talent and ability are the only factors that matter.
Hey, the Blue Jays won two World Series!
I guess I'm not clear. I'm talking about your average MLS player is limited in the places they can go to make more money. They can't get a work permit to sign with a UK team because they're not good enough to qualify and, say, a Serie B team wouldn't waste time on him because they have the same or better options at home. And they can make $50k as a backup in MLS and take airplanes to away games, play in good stadiums and train at good practice facilities, so it's probably not a good comparison to a minor league baseball player who makes half that, rides a bus and uses minor league facilities.
But then, is anything? College athletes fly to games and have increasingly updated training facilities and minor league hockey players make more than their baseball counterparts.
And most of those players play in Scandinavian leagues, which aren't any better than MLS.
Communist
He was not hired to be champion of the working man. He was hired to do what was best for the people who hired him, which was the MLBPA, which was in existence for 13 years before he was hired.
If, in so doing, they had taken a piece of the pie which otherwise would have gone to the MLBPA, he would have violated his obligations, and perhaps even a fiduciary duty owed, to the MLBPA.
Since they were the ones paying his salary, and who he was legally obligated to represent, it makes it both right and praiseworthy. To represent others, at the possible expense of the people he was supposed to be representing, would be nothing less than act of betrayal.
You keep talking about future members, but the majority of minor leaguers are never seeing more than a cup of coffee. Only a minority are future members of the MLBPA.
What a coincidence. That's the guy that posted the article.
Not to step on dlf's toes, but the working conditions for minor leaguers are not fully subject to MLBPA collective bargaining. For example, unless I am misremembering, the minor league drug testing regimen was imposed by MLB. That is a very strong indication that the rules are not MLBPA bargained.
TO CLARIFY -- I believe they are bound by what the MLBPA negotiates, but that the ML CBA does not cover all of the working conditions in MiLB.
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