The sport’s shamelessly pro-ownership commissioner - former Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig - is stepping down at the end of the year. This 2014 season finds the labor relations of America’s pastime at a crossroads. Baseball players make, on average, a salary more than 40 percent higher than their counterparts in the more lucrative sport of pro football. But the benefits to the players - who, after all, generate the entirety of the game’s entertainment value - have been striking. The reserve clause was dead.įree agency now drives much of the modern game, to the dismay of traditionalists who saw stationary lineups as an essential ingredient of the team loyalties that fans develop over time. And by 1976, when pitchers Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith challenged the reserve clause by declaring themselves free agents, the courts upheld their position. But the Major League Baseball Players Association struck over the issue in 1972. Sure enough, the high court up-held the 1921 antitrust exemption and after the 1971 season was done, Flood never played professional baseball again. When Miller said yes, Flood replied, “That’s good enough for me.” Flood asked whether the challenge would benefit other players in the future. What’s more, Miller added, even if Flood did win in court, he would never play for a Major League franchise again. Players union head Marvin Miller, a former economist with the United Steelworkers, informed him that the Supreme Court wouldn’t overturn the antitrust exemption. “I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold,” Flood wrote to then-MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn three weeks before filing the suit.įlood’s noble cause was doomed - at least in the short term. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood filed a lawsuit contesting his team’s decision to trade him and several of his teammates to the Philadelphia Phillies. In January 1970, baseball’s feudal edifice began to crumble. The only way players could elude this regime was to retire, or to be traded- or released - by their owner (at which point, of course, they passed into a state of fealty to a different owner). Free of oversight, team owners colluded to lash Major League players to a labor regime in which owners retained control over a player’s working life, from what team he played for to how much he earned. Owing to a 1921 exemption from antitrust statutes, Major League Baseball long operated under a neo-feudal model of labor relations. The only way players could elude this regime was to retire, or to be traded- or released-by their owner.īut in economic terms, the game has almost never been played the right way. Free of oversight, team owners colluded to lash Major League players to a labor regime in which owners retained control over a player’s working life, from what team he played for to how much he earned.
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