Marvin Miller

Marvin Miller served as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 through 1982, transforming the association into a bona fide labor union, then one of the strongest collective bargaining units in the United States.

Club owners had ruled baseball with an iron fist for nearly a century before Marvin Miller's appointment as the MLBPA's executive director. Players had no ability to choose their employer because they were tied to their original club by a “reserve clause” in every Player contract that provided for automatic renewal. Salaries and benefits were low, and working conditions abysmal.

After graduating from NYU with an economics degree in 1938, Miller spent several years with the National War Labor Board before joining unions representing machinists, auto workers and steel workers. He brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to the Players' cause in 1966, when at age 49 he was recruited by an MLBPA committee made up of Jim Bunning, Bob Friend, Harvey Kuenn and Robin Roberts.

Combining deft analytical and communication skills with a clarity of vision, Miller convinced the initially skeptical Players of the strength they could wield through solidarity and collective bargaining and guided the Players over a 16-year period during which the industry grew exponentially.

In 1968, Miller led a committee of Players that negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in baseball history. The agreement raised the game's minimum salary from $6,000 – where it had been stuck for two decades – to $10,000 while setting the tone for future advances.

In 1970, Miller helped Players negotiate the right to arbitration to resolve grievances – an achievement Miller considered the most significant of the union's early years. The impartial dispute resolution process paved the way for nearly all of the gains the Players would achieve in ensuing years.

That breakthrough led to free agency five years later when Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally played out the option year of their contracts and challenged the “reserve clause” before arbitrator Peter Seitz. The arbitrator's decision in favor of the Players was later upheld in federal court.

A compromise that allowed all Players free agency after six years' service was formalized in the next collective bargaining agreement.

In all, Miller helped Players collectively negotiate enormous advances in salaries, benefits and working conditions over five collective bargaining agreements with the owners during his tenure. To reach those agreements, Miller guided the Players through strikes in 1972, 1980 and 1981 as well as lockouts in 1973 and 1976.

The often contentious labor disputes only served to strengthen the Players' resolve, and Miller helped preserve that strength by emphasizing to each succeeding group of Players the sacrifices that had been made on their behalf by Players who came before them.

Miller died at age 95 on Nov. 27, 2012, at his home in New York City.