When Richard M. “Dick’’ Moss began working for the United States Steelworkers as associate general counsel in 1963, he formed a close working relationship with Marvin Miller, the union’s chief economic advisor. Four years later, the two former colleagues began a partnership that helped the Major League Baseball Players Association break new ground and become the gold standard of professional sports unions.

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Moss, who died at 93 on Sept. 21, 2024, in Santa Monica, Calif., was born in Pittsburgh in 1931 and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Law School before serving in the Army for two years. He started his legal career with a small labor-side firm and briefly served as Assistant Attorney General for Pennsylvania.

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Several months after taking over as founding Executive Director at the MLBPA, Miller reached out and convinced Moss to join his effort to help ballplayers realize their true value to the industry. Over the next 11 years, Moss helped Miller instill a sense of generational unity that dramatically reshaped the landscape of professional team sports.

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Moss played a pivotal role in the MLBPA’s legal strategy, collective bargaining and contract administration. He litigated the union’s grievance arbitrations, including the landmark Messersmith-McNally case which ended the industry’s restrictive reserve system and created free agency in baseball.

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In 1974, Moss prevailed in a grievance on behalf of Jim “Catfish” Hunter that foreshadowed for all players’ the value of free agency. Neutral arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that A’s owner Charley Finley had breached Hunter’s contract by failing to pay $50,000 – half of Hunter's salary – into a long-term annuity fund. Seitz granted free agency to the American League Cy Young winner, and Hunter took advance of his new-found freedom by signing a five-year, $3.25 million contract with the New York Yankees.

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In 1975, under the guidance of Miller and Moss, players won the right to free agency when veteran pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally elected to test the reserve clause and didn’t sign contracts during the season. Arbitrator Seitz heard their grievance and sided with the union’s interpretation that a contract could only be renewed for one season -- not in perpetuity.

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The arbitration victory helped realign the balance of power between owners and players in all professional sports and resulted in a renegotiation of baseball’s reserve system that granted players free agency after six years of major league service. Through collective bargaining, Moss also helped players achieve the right to representation by an agent in their negotiations with clubs.

While Moss would leave the MLBPA in 1977 to represent individual players, he continued to serve the union as special counsel during the next three rounds of collective bargaining.

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As an agent, Moss represented more than 250 players and set several early standards. He negotiated the first $1 million single-season contract in team sports for Nolan Ryan in 1979 and presented Fernando Valenzuela’s winning case for the first $1 million salary arbitration award in 1982.

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In 1987, Moss and client Andre Dawson conceived a way to expose collusion in the free agent market, when Dawson publicly offered his services to the Chicago Cubs for a salary to be determined solely by the team. The strategy helped pave the way for a $280 million collusion settlement that owners paid to players in 1990.

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For years, Moss was an advisor, confidant and friend to Curt Flood during the star outfielder’s challenge of baseball’s anti-trust exemption, which remains a seminal event in the history of sports labor.

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In his retirement, Moss taught a class titled Sports and the Law at the University of Southern California, and lectured at top law schools across the country, including Yale, Harvard and Stanford. He also continued visiting the union’s New York City office multiple times annually to offer counsel and enduring friendship to the executives and MLBPA staffers who succeeded him.