Marvin Miller's Continued Exclusion From Cooperstown a Travesty

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- The biggest travesty in the Hall of Fame was perpetuated again Monday.

Marvin Miller, the first director of the players' union, came up one vote shy of being elected into the Hall of Fame by the Expansion Era Committee.

All Miller did in his almost two decades at the helm of the union was to completely change the landscape of the sport. Other than Babe Ruth, perhaps, no man has had a greater impact on the game.

And at its core, that's what Cooperstown membership is about -- being a game-changer and a dominant force in the sport.

More: Marvin Miller Slams Hall of Fame Over Latest Snub

During his time at the helm from 1966-83, Miller emasculated both the owners and the commissioners by getting the players to unite behind him in a one-for-all, all-for-one stance that made the union the most powerful of its kind in the U.S., perhaps in the world.

That meant he made enemies, and that's not really a problem. People in positions of great authority do that. What is a problem is having those who disagreed with everything Miller stood for use their vote to punish him when it should be a reward for democratizing the sport.

Miller took over at a time when players were locked into servitude with one team for life. Within a decade, he had urged players to serve as test cases challenging the owners' right to keep them from offering themselves on the open market. Free agency in baseball is entirely Marvin Miller's invention and legacy. And like it or hate it, free agency has redefined the game.

Players who once had to take second jobs in the winter to make ends meet now drive Bentleys. It could be argued that they shouldn't drive Bentleys, but the fact is that they do -- or at least they can -- and they have the winters free to travel, to hibernate or, as most do, to train for five months to set up a seven-month season.

It's easy to argue that ability to devote themselves single-mindedly to polishing their skills has made Major League Baseball better, top to bottom.

Under Miller, the players became much more than just a union. They became a trade association. Without them, there is no game. They don't represent the product; they are the product. For as much as it galls the owners, the players are the product. And if you don't think so, hearken back to the reaction of fans and baseball execs alike when owners decided to try and start the 1995 season with replacement players. It couldn't have been more of a joke if the whole process had taken place in full view on Comedy Central.

The voting bloc was a 16-man panel of four executives, four media members and eight Hall of Fame players, and to make it to Cooperstown, it took 12 "yes" votes. Miller got 11. One can only hope that he carried the players' contingent in the voting, but for as much as he's done for the players, even that's not a guarantee.

There are few fraternities on the planet more exclusive than the Hall of Fame, and there are many in that group who want to see it grow as slowly as possible.

As for the writers, well let's say that in the past in the open voting for Hall of Fame entry, there were voters who passed on Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron.

None of the 16 voters offered a breakdown of how the polling went, but former Reds catcher Johnny Bench said he voted for Miller and said he was "a bit surprised" the former union boss didn't get the nod.

"It's hard, you know, when you have to get 75 percent," Bench said Monday. "It's really very difficult.

"He had a huge impact on all of us (players) for sure. There's certain reasons that held some people back on their votes, but it's a very difficult decision to make."

Bench suggested that Miller's intransigence in making sure drug testing wasn't a consideration in negotiations with ownership worked against Miller in the final vote.

If so, that's a joke. Miller's last year in charge was 1983, when anabolic steroids were legal -- trafficking in them became illegal in 1988 -- and human growth hormones hadn't been developed (the first showed up in 1985). True, baseball had a cocaine problem in the early 1980s, but there were plenty of laws regarding cocaine on the books; the players' association didn't need to legislate that.

What Miller did was make sure that the players didn't give away their rights of privacy in random drug testing.

Now, at 93, Miller is paying the price for angering too many people.

Those five "no" voters, any one of whom could have put Miller in the Hall, will probably never have their names known by the public at large.

But if any of them had to defend their vote on anything other than simply not liking Miller and his agenda and his success, they'd have a tough go of it. Baseball is having record success these days, and much of that has to do with what Miller did in establishing the players as equal partners with the owners in guiding baseball forward.

That's Cooperstown worthy.

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