The Lords of the Realm, page 17
In Clearwater, Florida, the Phillies’ Bob Carpenter belatedly tried to turn back the clock. In a series of meetings, player reps Tim McCarver and Terry Harmon tried to explain the union’s position to him and GM John Quinn, who resolutely didn’t get it.
“If you get rid of Marvin, we could work this out ourselves,” Carpenter told them. “Let’s go back to the way it was.”
The talks summarily ended when Miller learned of them.
“You’re doing more damage by trying to negotiate individually with your owner than if you’d just leave,” he said. McCarver left immediately.
Jerry Hoffberger, the Orioles owner, met with his players in a multi-hour anti-Miller session. He called Miller’s pension proposal “ridiculous” and urged the players to take another team strike vote. “Take the leadership. Change your votes and accept the [owners’] proposal,” he said.
The Orioles took the new vote. The result stayed the same.
Other owners delivered their attacks through the press. Gussie Busch, of course, led the league in inflammatory quotes. “How can I pay a guy $150,000 and have him in the middle of orchestrating a strike?” he asked, referring to union stalwart Joe Torre.
Players across baseball hung together. The Twins’ Jim Perry lined up housing for strapped younger players with better-fixed veterans. He arranged for a place for the team to work out and a bus to transport players there. The Braves practiced on a high school field until they ran out of balls. Hank Aaron had hit them all into a grove of trees. Chris Cannizzaro of the Dodgers worked out with the Padres in San Diego, where he lived. Vada Pinson of the Angels worked out with die Athletics in Oakland, where he lived.
Miller hustled around keeping up players’ spirits between negotiating sessions. He talked to the Twins players by phone, over a gymnasium public address system. He met with Orioles players at Brooks Robinson’s home. Then he met with Reds and Pirates players as well.
Miller also gathered his player reps again, in a back room of the Four Seasons restaurant in New York. One was Willie Mays, pressed into service to represent the Giants after both that team’s player rep and his alternate had been traded. (Of the twenty-four player reps at the start of 1971, sixteen were traded or released by the spring of 1972.) As a favored pet of the Stonehams, Mays had never been much of a union participant. But in the twilight of his career, in the midst of the strike, he was a standup guy for Marvin Miller.
“I know it’s hard being away from the game and our paychecks and our normal life,” he said. “I love this game. It’s been my whole life. But we made a decision in Dallas to stick together, and until we’re satisfied, we have to stay together. This could be my last year in baseball, and if the strike lasts the entire season and I’ve played my last game, well, it will be painful. But if we don’t hang together, everything we’ve worked for will be lost.”
For the most part, the players faced withering press and public criticism. It was as though they had stolen America’s inalienable right to Opening Day. The strikers did find some support, however. On what was to have been Opening Day at Boston’s Fenway Park, a group of Wesleyan University students picketed with signs reading SUPPORT OUR BOYS IN UNIFORM. But most sentiment was squarely with the owners. When Reds pitcher Gary Nolan walked into a Cincinnati restaurant, one patron screamed, “Get out of here, Nolan!”
They were taking their cues from the writers, who, as they had in 1969, lambasted the “privileged, pampered players” (average salary: $34,000) and their “labor boss.” Baltimore Sun columnist Bob Maisel called Marvin Miller an “Edgar Bergen with 600 Charlie McCarthies.” The Sporting News called the strike’s April Fools Day start “the darkest day in sports history.” Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald reported that twenty-four players now made $100,000. The message was clear: What more do they want? Where will it all end?
The salary figures were true, but baseball’s pay scale actually still ran below other major sports. One good measure was the top of the pay scale. Hank Aaron, at $200,000, had baseball’s top salary. Joe Namath had football’s, at $250,000; Bobby Hull had hockey’s, at $275,000. The top-paid rookie in the NBA, Bob McAdoo, made $333,000.
Yet, when it came to the National Pastime, people found something uniquely immoral about money. Baseball players were supposed to be folk heroes, not union members. They were supposed to consider themselves lucky to play this great game for a living. They were certainly ingrates to grouse about the terms. Even former players joined in that chorus.
“I think playing baseball is a privilege,” said Jackie Jensen, a 1950s-era outfielder. “I enjoyed it and it was a game to me. It doesn’t look like it is anymore. And if it isn’t, it isn’t going to be much fun from here on in—either to the fans or the players. And I think that’s a tragedy.”
One notable ex-player directly contacted Marvin Miller, ripping into him for leading a strike. It was a body blow to the game, he said. Even after Miller had explained in detail why it came to pass, even after he’d emphasized it was the players’ decision, this critic could not be satisfied.
“No matter what the reason,” Robin Roberts insisted, “a strike is bad.”
Years later, he would explain his dismay. He’d pushed for candidate Miller as a negotiator, and the man had, indeed, achieved solid gains for the players. But in Roberts’s eyes a good negotiator should be able to work things out short of war. He remembered Miller once absolutely promising him there would be no strikes (Miller denies it).
“As far as I was concerned, there was plenty of money out there; it was all in how you were going to share it,” said Roberts. “I never anticipated both sides would be so thick-headed it would threaten the game.”
John Gaherin went way back with a top partner at the Philadelphia firm of Towers, Perrin, Forster and Crosby. The man was John Able, and the firm specialized in employee benefits. It consulted with companies about structuring compensation and funding employee benefits plans. Now, with the strike on, Gaherin retained Able to help find a way out of it.
Able pored over the structure and the finances of the pension plan and reported back to Gaherin. He personally didn’t see anything so “imprudent” about using the $800,000 surplus to fund the benefits increase.
“Look, the use of the reserve is a matter of fiduciary judgment,” he said. “If the plans’ actuary doesn’t say this is detrimental, you can certainly go ahead and do it.”
Gaherin knew more groundwork was required before he informed the Lords that his consultant agreed with Marvin Miller. He sent Able around to meet and educate some of the owners. Then, when the strike was four days old, he set up an ownership meeting in Chicago.
There they were still of a mind to strut and roar. Said Gene Autry to Gaherin, “Tell Miller I can still saddle up my horse and make a living that way.”
Gussie Busch offered to put up $1 million to help any teams needing assistance. He saw it as a grand gesture. Walter O’Malley saw it as a sign that Busch had no understanding of baseball’s economics.
“The Dodgers alone lose one million dollars each weekend the strike goes on,” he told him.
And there, Gaherin saw, was the problem. Interests were beginning to splinter. “Some guys wanted to give the players nothing and make it retroactive,” said Gaherin. “But the big guys, in particular, were pragmatic. To take a strike would hurt business.”
Ewing Kauffman saw it, too. The Royals owner was on the Executive Council, and as he went into meetings, the same owners who rattled sabers publicly tugged at his coat privately. “They would wait in the lobby and stand there begging to get this settled,” he said. “They said they could go broke.”
* * *
John Able finished his round of owner briefings and met with Gaherin. He was totally discouraged. Their eyes had glazed over at what he was trying to explain; their reactions to Miller’s proposal were purely visceral. “These are the money people of this country?” Able asked.
But, as it turned out, he had gotten through to some. The Braves’ Bill Bartholomay, an insurance executive, understood pension mechanics. So did Charlie Finley, the old insurance hustler. “Very few owners actually knew there was any surplus in the pension fund,” Finley told reporters. “The owners didn’t understand what this was all about.”
The statement drove the other owners crazy, of course, but Able had provided Finley—and the rest of the owners—with an excuse to cave. One week into the strike, a growing number of owners were ready to do so. In terms of finances and firepower, they had it all going for them. But they had put something in motion that they had no experience handling. In each of their cities, the pressure to let the games begin was mounting fast.
The Twins’ Calvin Griffith was in the midst of his usual anti-Miller rantings when Gaherin interrupted.
“If you want to beat him, keep ’em out till May first,” he replied. “Make ’em hungry.”
“But what will the press do to me?” Griffith bleated.
“Do you want to break the union or not?”
Calvin Griffith was reduced to mumbles, and the situation, to Gaherin, was reduced to its essence. “Marvin had it all going for him,” he later reflected. “Everybody wanted to shoot him but nobody wanted to pull the trigger.”
By April 11, Gaherin and Miller had the outlines of a compromise settlement. They would take $500,000 out of the surplus to increase the owners’ pension contribution. It took two more days’ wrangling, however, to determine whether a total of eighty-six lost games would be rescheduled (they weren’t), and if players would be paid for their time out (they weren’t). The strike ended April 13.
“John,” said John Able to Gaherin, as he wrapped up his consulting assignment, “don’t ever call me again.”
The delayed Opening Day, April 15, was dreary. In St. Louis, only 7,808 people came out for the Cardinals-Expos opener. Not even Gussie Busch showed, although he did weigh in with an announcement. His players would no longer have the luxury of private rooms on the road. They would double up to save the club $10,000.
As Bob Gibson struggled through the first inning, a fan yelled, “Hurry up, I’ve got to go to a union meeting!” When outfielder Jose Cruz misplayed a single, another spectator shouted, “Put a dollar sign on it!” When Joe Torre, National League MVP and union stalwart, came to bat, he was booed.
It was that way across America that day. Fans would never again view baseball in quite the same light. Neither would the players. For the second time in four years, the Lords had refused to give them peanuts. Instead, they had ultimately handed them a great victory. Santa Claus was dead. But then the players didn’t need him now. Marvin Miller’s union had come of age.
7
A TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD catcher with a ponytail promptly threw a new challenge in the Lords’ face. His name was Ted Simmons, and he refused to sign his 1972 contract. Nobody had ever done that before. It was against the rules: Major League Rule 3C, to be exact. It forbade players to suit up if they hadn’t signed a contract.
It was, in effect, the enforcer of the reserve clause. With a signed contract, a player was always two years away from freedom: one year for the length of the standard contract, one year for the club’s option on it. It was like a tablet handed down from Judge Landis. And nobody had ever challenged it—until Marvin Miller.
Even he didn’t do so right away. In 1969, Yankees pitcher Al Downing was a holdout into spring training. Finally the Yankees unilaterally renewed his contract. That was their right, under baseball’s rules. A player had until March 1 to come to terms. After that, the GM could fill in whatever figure he liked, up to the maximum cut.
The Yankees’ Lee MacPhail had done so, but the miffed lefty still wouldn’t sign. Downing had been one of New York’s best pitchers through the sixties, going 14–10 with a 2.63 ERA as recently as 1967. But injuries had limited him to 15 games and a 3–3 record in ’68. The Yankees wanted him to take a pay cut. Downing resisted. No sign, no play, said MacPhail. Downing called Miller. Was that right? Was there anything he could do about it?
Miller’s answer: no and no. Downing had been renewed and thus was under contract. In Miller’s opinion, that meant he didn’t have to sign it. On the other hand, if he fought it, he could only appeal to the commissioner. Guess who Bowie Kuhn would side with. “The club has the whip hand,” said Miller.
Given that bleak analysis, and the fact that he needed to get in shape, Downing signed and reported.
An independent arbitrator changed everything. Miller got that in the 1970 Basic Agreement. Now he could hope that a neutral outsider would read 3C or 10A the way he did. Now he was emboldened to challenge these baseball canons. The commissioner no longer had the final say.
Miller began planting the seeds of challenge in March 1971. At each spring training meeting he read Section 10A word for word, then gave his interpretation:
“We read the language of the contract to mean what it says,” he said. “If you’re not in agreement on salary by March first, the club can, in the next ten days, renew your contract for one year. That means you’re under contract again and you’re not required to sign anything. By signing last year’s contract, you’ve given the club the option to unilaterally renew it.
“In my view, the contract is clear. At the end of that season there’s no further contractual tie between the player and his club. He can become a free agent.”
A recent basketball case supported his view, Miller continued. In 1967, Rick Barry had jumped from the NBA’s San Francisco Warriors to the ABA’s Oakland Oaks. The Warriors sued to keep their star forward. A court did bar him from joining the Oaks until the expiration of the option year in his Warriors contract. But the point was this, said Miller: the NBA’s player-contract language was, word for word, the same as baseball’s. A federal judge ruled the Warriors only had Barry for one year, not forever.
“Now this is a matter that shouldn’t be undertaken lightly,” said Miller. “There will be all kinds of pressures on any player who doesn’t sign. The clubs disagree with me. They think they have perpetual renewal rights. This would probably wind up before an arbitrator. It would be an ordeal. But I’m confident that I’m right, and it’s something to keep in mind.”
Ted Simmons, sitting in the St. Petersburg clubhouse of the Cardinals, did just that. He was a stocky six-footer, just three years removed from being an all-state high school fullback in Michigan. He went to the University of Michigan on a football scholarship. But when St. Louis drafted him number-one in 1967 and offered a $50,000 signing bonus, he left the gridiron for baseball.
Simmons advanced rapidly through the minors, hitting less than .317 only in his first professional year. But in the off-season he continued to attend the University of Michigan, which proved a profound counterbalance to minor league baseball. The Ann Arbor campus was one of America’s most radical. The leftist Students for a Democratic Society was founded there. Protests against the war in Vietnam erupted regularly.
Simmons was no bomb-thrower; he was a jock from suburban Detroit. But he was significantly influenced by his time at Ann Arbor. He had shoulder-length hair, just to show which side he was on. He rode a motorcycle, just to flaunt his individuality further. He was a rebel in shinguards.
By 1970, Simmons was in the bigs. By 1971, he was the Cardinals’ full-time catcher, playing 133 games. Simba, as he was called, was a curiosity to his teammates—“a flower child,” Joe Torre said with a smile years later. But he was already a heady receiver and a demon hitter. Simmons batted .304 in 1971 and he would eventually set a National League record for career home runs by a switch-hitter (182).
But Simmons was still making so little—$14,000—that he had to move in with his in-laws during the strike. He couldn’t afford to do anything else. Simmons was “horrified” at his precarious position, though perfectly ready to follow Marvin Miller into battle. To him, it was another just cause against the establishment.
Simmons had begun an individual battle, too, that would only come into focus after the strike. He refused to sign a contract with the Cardinals. As an emerging premier catcher, he thought he was worth $30,000. That wasn’t even up to the major league average of $34,000, he argued. But Cardinals GM Bing Devine said it was too much too fast. He was only willing to go as far as the low twenties.
The 1972 season belatedly opened, with Simmons, sans contract, behind the plate for the Cardinals. For the first time, a big-leaguer was playing a season without one. It was the baseball equivalent of a draft-card burning. Simmons later recalled: “When someone representing the establishment said, ‘This is what you’ll do,’ I was just bulletproof enough, naive enough, and political enough to say, ‘I’m not going to.’ ”
The Lords wouldn’t respond with brute force. GMs no longer dared pull the kind of stunt the Yankees’ Ralph Houk once had: threatening Jim Bouton with $100-a-day fines as long as he remained unsigned. Marvin Miller would haul them before an arbitrator in a New York minute.
But there were other ways to pressure the player, and that’s what John Gaherin counseled. “Get a hold of this. We don’t want to test it,” he told Bing Devine. “Sign him. Don’t let him go through this year without a contract.”
The Cardinals put on the pressure. Gussie Busch cornered Simmons in manager Red Schoendienst’s office before a game and harangued him. The first pitch had to be delayed until Busch was through. Bing Devine crept up his offer into the higher twenties. When Simmons wouldn’t bite, Devine did. He reminded him he could always cut him back to the minimum $12,000. It was tough stuff for a player who’d already lost 5 percent of the year’s salary to the strike. But Simmons wouldn’t budge. The number is $30,000.
Marvin Miller looked on. At one level, he loved the prospect of a test case. At another, he feared for the kid. He counseled Simmons, reminding him of the realities. He could have a good case yet still lose. Curt Flood did. (His suit was pending at the time before the Supreme Court.) He could be a talented player yet lose his career to this challenge. Curt Flood did.
