"A well-paid slave is, nonetheless, still a slave."

Signed, The Artist Formerly (and Futurely) Known as Prince

Flood is closer to someone who signed a non compete clause. Which are legal to a certain degree, they cant be all encompassing the last time I studied this along time ago but they are legal.

Agreements not to compete are generally only upheld in rather narrow circumstances - with limits on the type of position as well as the temporal and geographic scope. MLB is unlikely to meet the criteria in most states, but if the crack MLB lawyers think they can, let them raise it in the next round of CBA negotiations. The fact that MLB has never gone that route may suggest that even they don't think it is a viable theory.

The Detroit area is full of people who make six figures for doing jobs any high school graduate could learn in an hour.

If that sort of thing outrages you, welcome to Washington, home of tens of thousands of hired corporate guns who make that much and more.

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Does anyone know the ratio salaries to revenues pre-Miller? That would be very interesting. My guess is that he moved the needle toward the ballplayers but I'd be curious to find out if that's right.

Just to take one of many examples from the 1951 Celler Monopoly Subcommitee hearings (p. 1520), in 1950 the combined operating income for all 16 Major League clubs was $31,665,000. This included gate receipts, radio / TV revenue, concessions, and stadium rentals to football teams, etc.

In that same year, player salaries and pension fund contributions combined were $6,246.00. Doing the math, that means that salaries and pensions were 19.7% of total revenue.

In 2012 dollars, the corresponding numbers would be about $10 million per club in revenue, and $2 million per club in player salaries + pension contributions. Welcome to The Good Old Days.

BTW that series of Celler Subcommittee hearings remains the best primary source for baseball finances in the reserve clause era. I'm surprised that someone hasn't made them available online, although for all I know they may have by this time.

There are basically three reasons why Marvin Miller was able to transform major league baseball players from moderately well-paid young men into athletic Vanderbilts being paid, in some cases, about $30,000 per at-bat, or $100,000 an inning.

I remember reading at some point during his career that Stan Musial was making about $550 a game, which is about $5300 a game in today's dollars, or about $589 per inning. Yeah, I can see why the Lords of Baseball don't want Marvin Miller in the Hall of Fame.

OTOH, there's no worries about "big market" and "small market" when nobody is paying anybody *($# anyway.

Thanks Andy. Never heard of the Celler subcom. Are you getting that from a book?

That suggests that free agency has tripled player's take of the revenue.

Yeah, Miller's a miracle worker. It's not like there are any other examples where unionized labor led to a grossly overpaid workforce to the ultimate determent of the industry. Oh wait, that's every example of a unionized workforce.



Crass and ignorant at the same time. Nice.

Thanks Gaelan!

Considering that James resisted the urge to get all right-wing-axe-grindy (despite a surprisingly flippant tone) I wish it could’ve taken this site more than one post to do it.

The right wing stuff is fun, I never get accused of that. The point was that it's not really a great accomplishment to have union members be overcompensated, every union leads to that. The Miller worship is nauseating, the HOF talk is comical.

How unjust to be "accused" of "right wing stuff" when all you're saying is that labor unions are by definition bad. Go move to Honduras.

The point was that it's not really a great accomplishment to have union members be overcompensated, every union leads to that.

When you just arbitrarily declare players to be "grossly overpaid" and "overcompensated," without a hint of why baseball salaries are detrimental to the industry, you sound like someone giving a knee-jerk cliche: "people shouldn't be paid millions to play a game, it is just wrong."

Also, posts #5 and #7 raise some interesting questions regarding the detriment to the industry:

I don't know why I should [value] an abstract "industry" over actual people and actual workers. (Especially since by "industry" I'm pretty sure you mean "the owners of the particular firms within the industry".

Funny; as a customer of the industry, I find modern baseball to be great. It's also super-profitable for owner and employee alike

Thanks Andy. Never heard of the Celler subcom. Are you getting that from a book?

Yeah, I've got pretty much all the transcripts and reports from congressional monopoly hearings from 1951 through 1976, though the great bulk of them are from the early and then late 1950's. Besides all those financial statements, they contain testimony from everyone involved in the game from players to owners and then some, most famously from Casey Stengel and Mickey Mantle. I got them from a woman in Virginia whose 95 year old brother had passed away, and left her an amazing baseball collection, including multiple runs of the Putnam team history series with about 10 copies of Povich's book on the Senators. Too bad I couldn't have had more buys like that.

That suggests that free agency has tripled player's take of the revenue.

Sounds about right. Goddam Randian Commie just ruined the game, didn't he?

The point was that it's not really a great accomplishment to have union members be overcompensated, every union leads to that.

How exactly are players overcompensated? Above league minimum, which is peanuts, every dollar given from a team to a player is voluntary.

Sounds about right. Goddam Randian Commie just ruined the game, didn't he?

To continue my Atlas Shrugged baseball analogy from #12, Imagine in the years between Curt Flood's strike and the implementation of free agency, the best players played somewhere nobody would watch them, under the true capitalist/Hank Reardon/Dagny Taggart type of owner. The type of owner who would be despised by the moochers and mercantilists in that class, and say things like "Let them all be free agents"

Sounds like Oakland to me.

As a hockey fan, I can't stop thinking about how good baseball has it. It is far and away the best run league and the reason it is the best run league is because Marvin Miller and Don Fehr forced them to be a well run league by removing the irrational and unjust privileges of the owners. It's evolved into a near perfect system in which almost everyone wins.

As a hockey fan, I can't stop thinking about how good baseball has it. It is far and away the best run league and the reason it is the best run league is because Marvin Miller and Don Fehr forced them to be a well run league by removing the irrational and unjust privileges of the owners. It's evolved into a near perfect system in which almost everyone wins

Pittsburgh and Kansas City say "Hello."

Yeah, I can see why the Lords of Baseball don't want Marvin Miller in the Hall of Fame.

I dont get this. It's being voted on by an old timers committee, no?

Pittsburgh and Kansas City say "Hello."

Barring a league where everyone wins, I don't see how this criticism answers what Gaelan wrote.

what 66 said.

pittsburgh and kansas city franchises are making lots of money for the owners, and the worst player on those teams is still making roughly 10x the average american salary for playing a sport they are insanely good at. i wish i could be so miserable.