The Lords of the Realm, page 27
In his dislike of Bowie Kuhn, Miller took a back seat only to Charlie Finley. He hated Kuhn’s air of self-importance, which was doubly galling since he was, in reality, Walter O’Malley’s messenger boy. And he hated Kuhn’s acting as if he were czar over them all when, in Miller’s view, he represented only the owners’ interests.
Ed Fitzgerald explained Kuhn’s view of his role as reflecting the origins of the office: “He knew Landis was brought in not to be the head man of the owners, but to protect the institution of baseball against those who would do something bad against it. That was his vision of commissioner too. He saw himself as the owners’ commissioner, the players’ commissioner, and, most important, the fans’ commissioner. Bowie felt very strongly he wasn’t just there to protect the interests of the ownership. It was his role to protect the national jewel of baseball.
“Miller resented Bowie acting as though he had the players’ interests at heart. He went out of his way to embarrass him on that point. He was telling the players, ‘Bowie Kuhn isn’t here to protect you. I am.’ He didn’t like the commissioner acting as though he were the God of baseball and all the disciples were watched over by him.”
Miller and Moss feared what Kuhn might do, during this unsettled period, in the name of “integrity of the game.” They’d been scared to death he would snatch the Messersmith case from Seitz on those grounds. (Indeed, Kuhn seriously considered doing so.) Now they wanted the Basic Agreement to explicitly bar the commissioner from getting involved in matters subject to bargaining. It would further curtail his power to scandal-related issues.
Recalled Miller: “I just kept thinking, ‘What if we negotiate all this and the commissioner stepped in and said, “I rule that free agency involves the integrity of the game”?’ ”
It was a replay of 1970: Gaherin trying to yield enough ground to satisfy Miller, then trying to soft-sell the package to Kuhn. This time, Kuhn resisted even more stubbornly. He’d been in office longer, and he’d seen what came of tossing Miller a bone. That independent arbitrator who “wouldn’t handle anything vital”? Right—he only gutted the reserve system.
“No. No, no, no,” Kuhn told one meeting of the PRC board. “This is a diminution of the commissioner’s power.”
Bob Howsam spoke up. “Bowie, we’ve already compromised on the meal money. What’s so sacrosanct about your powers?”
Kuhn seethed. That day’s business was effectively over. Later, Fitzgerald approached Gaherin.
“Can you make a deal without this?” he asked.
“No,” said Gaherin. “If Bowie screws around on this, Marvin will be one hundred percent convinced he wants to screw around with free agency.”
“Well, I think if you can get the rest of it, Bowie will buy it.”
It was a few weeks later when the two sides finally got down to the short strokes. The player leaders, who had left the bargaining table to play ball, were reassembled. The last cards were laid on the table. Clubs had until August 9 to sign any unsigned players; if they weren’t signed by then, they moved on to free agency. Bowie Kuhn’s powers were, indeed, being whittled away. As a threshold for free agency, the owners proposed six years.
Phil Garner, the A’s infielder, would always remember the moment he heard that number: “You’re trying not to grin and you’re trying to say, ‘Aw, Christ, this is going to kill us.’ Meanwhile, inside, you’re going, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ ”
The morning after the All-Star Game, the Lords assembled at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia to review the proposed settlement. Many were in foul temper. Kuhn was still being pilloried for ending the lockout. Some owners were sure they could have gotten better free-agency terms had the lockout continued—eight years, probably, or at least seven. Others were after Gaherin’s scalp.
“If anyone does not believe that we had our ass kicked in this labor matter, they are dead wrong,” Gussie Busch declared. “We have lost the war, and the only question is, can we live with the surrender terms.”
Ed Fitzgerald defended it. Seitz had denuded the old reserve system; Gaherin had done a hell of a job to negotiate a new limited one. Baseball would at least be reclothed in some manner. These last few months had shown how important that was. He urged them to ratify the deal and end the chaos.
“Any deal is better than no deal,” he said.
“Gentlemen, I never heard of anything so damned asinine in all my life,” barked Charlie Finley. “You’ve got to be crazy to believe that.”
He offered his solution yet again: “Make ’em all free agents!”
Again he was ignored.
The ratification vote was an unusually divided 17–7; the contract got through “by the skin of our teeth,” as Gaherin put it. It portended much more acrimony to come.
11
THE WORLD SERIES that fall was a mismatch. The Big Red Machine had never run so powerfully, rolling over the Yankees in four straight. Johnny Bench batted .533 and was named Series MVP. Sportswriters compared the 1976 Reds to the legendary 1927 Yankees.
Bob Howsam was happy with the rout-in-progress, and yet subdued. It was his greatest triumph in baseball, but he knew it was the end of an era. His empire would begin to be dismantled in two weeks, when the first free-agent market opened. He’d lose Don Gullett. Others would surely follow.
“This is the last of the great teams,” he told an interviewer.
Ted Turner saw to it there would be off-field excitement to counteract the on-field yawns. Game four in New York was washed out by rain, driving baseball men into the hospitality suite at the Americana Hotel. Into the room, that evening, reeled Turner. He’d just flown in from Chicago, downing six drinks en route.
Turner spied Bob Lurie, the Giants’ new owner, and made his way toward him. He coveted Giants outfielder Gary Matthews, who’d hit .279 with 20 homers and 84 RBIs that year—totals far exceeding the combined efforts of Turner’s motley outfield. Turner’s GM, John Alevezos, had even twice approached Matthews’s agent during the season, telling him Atlanta was hot for the unsigned Matthews. That landed the Braves in hot water. They were fined $10,000 by Bowie Kuhn for violating baseball’s antitampering rules. Now the free-agent draft was just ahead, and Turner wanted to personally gibe Lurie.
Three sheets to the wind, he first razzed him about dreadful Candlestick Park. Why didn’t he move the team to a less windy place, like Phoenix? Then he ragged on him for making a federal case of Alevezos’s approaches.
“Now you’ve made me really mad,” said Turner, in his usual hundred-decibel voice. “I’ll do everything I can to get Gary Matthews.” He told Lune just how he planned to wow him in Atlanta Saturday. Matthews would be flown there and see a billboard just outside the airport: WELCOME, GARY MATTHEWS. Then he’d be whisked to a party in his honor at the Stadium Club.
Writers stepped out of the shrimp line and over to the ruckus Turner was stirring up. A growing crowd gathered around the laughing Braves owner and the tight-lipped Lurie.
“There’s gonna be a gala celebration,” Turner continued. “The major celebrities from Atlanta are gonna be present. So is the mayor and the governor. Whatever you offer him, Lurie, I plan to pay him double. In fact, I have offered him twice as much as your attendance was last year. Let’s see, that was about 630,000 or so. Well, he can count on that much to play for us.”
The next morning’s newspapers reported Turner’s harangue. The Giants’ owner was no match for Turner in repartee. Lurie wasn’t a mad genius like Turner but the mild-mannered heir to a real estate fortune. He’d put a small portion of it into buying and saving the Giants earlier that year.
“It’s tampering,” complained Lurie to baseball’s general counsel, Sandy Hadden. Under the labor contract, the Giants still had exclusive negotiating rights to Matthews until November 1. But the player wouldn’t even bother talking to him after reading Turner’s statements.
It wasn’t the first such complaint heard by Hadden. Some owners had been, as they say, “pitching on the black” on tampering all year. Early on, Jerry Hoffberger complained bitterly about owners sending messages through the press to his eleven unsigned players. An owner would be quoted on how they’d love to have this or that Oriole. The player would become that much more impossible to sign. There were accusations of certain GMs playing footsie with certain agents, though only the Alevezos charge stuck.
Kuhn felt compelled to send out a stern antitampering directive in late August: “While I have tried to view such conduct with a certain amount of tolerance in the past, that is no longer possible under the radically changed circumstances of the present time.”
But still it happened. In mid-September, a writer reached Gussie Busch at home and tried to draw him out on his free-agent wish list. The fellow ran down some names, and got the same response for Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi: “You’re coming awfully close.”
It made a good little story for the writer and a $5,000 fine for Busch. He and Lou Susman met with Kuhn to appeal. When they got nowhere on the facts, Susman asked for pity. Busch was seventy-five, an old man now. Kuhn was unyielding.
Countless other secret dealings never surfaced. The A’s played their last series of the year in New York, and Yankees first base coach Elston Howard spent the whole three games lobbying Oakland first baseman Don Baylor. Great city, great team. Finally, he handed him a note: “If you are interested in coming to the Yankees, tell Elston yes or no.” It was unsigned, but Baylor guessed the author was a somewhat higher authority than Howard.
Turner’s public harangue was something altogether different. If Lurie wanted to pursue it, said Hadden, he should write up what happened and file a complaint. Lurie, fuming, said he would.
On a clear, brisk November morning, baseball’s owners and GMs assembled at the Plaza Hotel in New York for the first “reentry draft.” That’s what everybody called it, anyway, though the term was a misnomer. Teams were really just there to declare their interest in particular players and to stake out negotiating rights with them. The teams, picking in reverse order of finish, were limited to “drafting” a maximum of twelve free agents apiece and signing a maximum of two. The Lords had pressed for this format, believing it might bring a modicum of order to the brave new world.
Marvin Miller was there, watching like a hawk. It was the moment he’d awaited for ten years. Yet, as always, deeply suspicious of the owners, and mindful of O’Malley’s influence, he was still worried that the owners might collude and not make a single bid.
He relaxed only when Charles Bronfman bounced to his feet to make the first pick. “The Montreal Expos,” he said, voice aquiver, “are proud to draft Reggie Jackson.”
The room was lit by bright chandeliers, the sound muted by thick carpet, the atmosphere that of an elegant art auction. The twenty-two players on the block ranged from Rembrandts (Rudi, Fingers, Jackson) to remainders (Tito Fuentes, Paul Dade, Billy Smith). Most teams would participate with gusto, since drafting cost nothing.
But not all. Bob Howsam made the same dour statement each time it was the Reds’ turn to draft: “In fairness to the players who have won the world championship for us two years in a row, and considering the way our organization is structured, we do not think it would be right for the Cincinnati club to get into bidding contests that must come out of this draft.”
In short: “We pass.”
By noon, it was over. The clubs had completed seventeen rounds, drafting fast and hard. A total of thirteen players were picked by the maximum twelve clubs.
By midafternoon, Bowie Kuhn had convened a hearing on the Gary Matthews affair. Turner and Lurie gave their versions. Kuhn gave Atlanta the go-ahead to negotiate with Matthews but he reserved the right to revoke his signing. He all but promised disciplinary action against Turner.
By nightfall, the first free agent was signed. It was Bill Campbell, the American League’s top reliever, who’d refused to re-up with the Twins after Calvin Griffith refused to meet his salary demand of $27,000. In 1976, Campbell merely tied a league record for most wins by a reliever (17) and set a record for innings pitched by a reliever (168).
After the draft, Campbell and his agent went upstairs at the Plaza with Red Sox assistant GM John Claibome. At 10:00 P.M. they came down to make an announcement. Campbell had signed a five-year, $1 million contract. The pitcher, whose income had just multiplied tenfold, was so dazed as to be totally frank.
“Honestly, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” he said. “A million dollars? No one’s worth that, but if they want to pay me, I’m certainly not going to turn it down.”
The first newspaper story ever to mention Jerry Kapstein is illuminating: “Young Jeremy Kapstein and a friend, both 14-year-old ninth-graders, bicycled 62 miles to Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., to get a firsthand look at the state of U.S. national defense.”
The Providence Journal-Bulletin story went on to tell how Jeremy talked his way past the guard at the front gate and got a guided tour of the base, lunch at the Officers Club, an audience with the base commander, and a ride back home in a helicopter.
Clearly, this boy would have a future as a player’s agent. Kapstein didn’t know this yet, since it was 1958 and there was no such thing. But from age nine, when he began poring over box scores, he was headed that way. He loved sports; he reveled in statistics; and, as a teenager, he talked his way into keeping stats for the Providence College basketball broadcasters for five dollars a game.
Kapstein was also a straight-A student and went on to Harvard. There, one Saturday, he met announcer Keith Jackson, who was calling the Harvard-Dartmouth football game. Kapstein talked his way into doing some work for ABC Sports, where he developed all kinds of new wrinkles in football stats. The world has Kapstein—whose nickname at Harvard was “Statstein”—to thank for time-of-possession comparisons.
Kapstein even did radio play-by-play for a semipro football team named the Providence Steamrollers. He called one game while sitting in the stands amid supporters of the opposition. Upon describing one Providence touchdown a little too enthusiastically, Kapstein was beaten up. Few of his preppier Harvard classmates could claim such an experience.
In the early seventies, after law school and the Navy, Kapstein settled in Washington and turned to agentry. His first brush with it was when his brother, Dan, got a tryout as a punter with the New England Patriots. He was cut, but Kapstein was intrigued by pro-sports contracts. He picked up a smattering of baseball, football, and hockey players as clients. But he kept his “day jobs”: doing stats work for ABC and as color man on Washington Bullets TV games.
Kapstein even managed to schedule baseball contract negotiations to coincide with Bullets road trips. One time he came in to see Padres GM Peter Bavasi, carrying his road duffel bag. Bavasi, wary of all agents, suspected it contained a tape recorder.
“Hold it,” he said. “I’m not going to talk with you until I see what’s in that duffel bag.”
Kapstein unzipped it and threw two handfuls of dirty laundry at Bavasi. Such incidents, together with his propensity for doing business out of phone booths, branded him as a flake. But hey, this was baseball. There was always room for one more. He was at least an intriguing one: part Sammy Glick, part Marty Glickman.
With the advent of salary arbitration, Jerry Kapstein got his break. It was made for Kapstein, since it was all about statistics. What numbers put a player in the best light? How did players compare in performance and pay? It was an arena swirling with Mark Twain’s three kinds of untruths: lies, damned lies, and statistics. A wizard like Kapstein could transform a utility infielder into Babe Ruth reincarnated.
Kapstein was preparing Ken Holtzman’s first salary arbitration case in the winter of 1974 when two Oakland teammates, Rollie Fingers and Darold Knowles, approached him about handling theirs. Kapstein took on Charlie Finley, mano a mano. Finley tried his usual bluster and blarney. In Holtzman’s case, he said he won twenty-one games only because of great relief pitching. In Fingers’s case, he said he’d only been third in the league in saves because those great A’s starters handed him so many leads. But he was no match for Kapstein’s blizzard of stats.
Kapstein produced thirty exhibits between the three cases, was successful in all three, and was immediately the toast of the A’s clubhouse. Anybody who could beat Finley out of $26,000—the total spread in the three cases—was okay. Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, Gene Tenace, and Don Baylor signed on as clients too. Kapstein rapidly built his baseball clientele from there; and finally he dropped his day jobs.
Yet with the reserve clause in full force, there still wasn’t much money in it. Agents had no leverage and players still averaged $44,000 a year. It was a rare bird who tried to make a go of full-time agentry.
“How can you make a living at this?” Barry Rona once asked.
“Well, I have twenty-five players and that’s five thousand here and ten thousand there,” Kapstein replied.
And so, by default, Jerry Kapstein had a big stable of players—about sixty of them—come 1976 and was always hustling for more. Outfielder Tom Grieve once took a phone call in the Rangers’ dugout ten minutes before game time.
“This is Jerry Kapstein,” said the caller. “Do you need an agent?”
Grieve, taken aback, mumbled thanks but no thanks.
A lot of players didn’t have agents then, nor were they sure they wanted one. Richie Bry, a St. Louis stockbroker-turned-agent, handed out brochures headlined: WHY YOU NEED AN AGENT.
Most players had no idea, in this brave new world, what kind of money a skilled negotiator might get them. “Why should I give somebody ten percent when I do all the work?” asked pitcher Mark Fidrych. But they had a very good idea what their GMs thought of agents. “[Players] were still afraid to have one,” recalled Bry. “They’d ask, ‘But if I have one, what’s going to happen to me?’ ”
