The Lords of the Realm, page 23
Griffith refused to increase his salary offer of $84,000, while Oliva continued to ask for the $91,000 he received last year when as a designated hitter he batted .291 with 16 home runs and a team-leading 92 runs batted in.
It is also clear this is not a typical spring training contract squabble. This is a battle between strong-willed men and involve principle more than money, and it contains bitterness and irony.
For example, as Oliva left Tinker Field carrying his equipment bag so that he could start practicing alone, he said, “I should have gone to arbitration. I felt he, Griffith, would be happy if I didn’t do that. I thought he would be more reasonable. Now I see that meant nothing to him. If I knew what I know now, I would have applied for arbitration. I would have won, too, just like the other guys.” Dick Woodson, Steve Braun and Larry Hisle were the only Twins to submit to arbitration and each won additional money.
Griffith said he was mad that the three defeats cost $15,000 and that he would get them back “even if I have to trade them.”
Later, after an inquiry from Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, he denied making the statement. Ironically, Marvin Miller, executive director of Major League Baseball Players Association, said one reason the Association demanded binding arbitration was Griffith’s salary and negotiating policies. At the time Oliva could have applied for arbitration, he was the only player considering the move who was being asked to take a cut. Woodson, Braun and Hisle were being offered raises they felt were too small, while Oliva was being offered the full 20 percent slash permitted by the basic agreement. In short, he had nothing to lose by submitting to arbitration.
“But just before the deadline, the offer was raised to $84,000,” Oliva said. “I thought if I pleased him and didn’t apply, I could talk him into giving me what I made last year. That’s all I wanted. Other designated hitters, Orlando Cepeda of Boston, Deron Johnson of Oakland and Tom Davis of Baltimore, got raises but I only want the same.”
In his office, Griffith indicated Oliva might end up playing for $73,000 or a full 20 percent cut. “If he doesn’t sign by March 10, Sunday, I can invoke the option clause,” the president said.
“If I do that, I can cut him as much as I want up to 20 percent. Of course he would then be playing out his option. At the end of the season he would become a free agent.…”
“Now,” said Lou Hoynes, “what do the clubs want here today?”
He had risen to make his final arguments to Seitz.
“Well, we want to maintain me basic system as it existed for years, as the Association found it, and as we believe the rules clearly provide.
“We recognize that this system will be subject to changes in collective bargaining, with safeguards for clubs’ rights that we may negotiate as we make those changes, but we ask this panel to maintain the status quo. We ask the panel not to adopt a sudden abandonment of what now is on a willy-nilly basis. That would simply be wrong and, we believe, beyond the panel’s power.
“The Association has absolutely nothing to lose here by testing its theory out with this panel. If it loses, it is right back where it started. It tested a theory out in the Flood case and when it lost we were right back at the bargaining table where we were before trying to shape some compromise on a modification to the reserve system and when … it loses this grievance, as it did the Flood case, it will again have lost nothing of substance. We will be right back at the bargaining table trying to figure out how we can, together, reshape the reserve system for the future.
“On the other hand, if the clubs lose, the baseball world, we feel, will be turned upside down and the fondest dreams of the leadership of the Association will be substituted for the reality of what always has been within the baseball community.”
The two sides had consumed three days, filled 842 pages of transcript, and filed ninety-seven exhibits, leading Seitz finally to refuse more. “Whole hillsides are being decimated of standing timber for the exhibits in this case,” he said, cutting off further exhibits on “environmental grounds.”
Finally the arguing was over, and the Seitz watch was on. Which way was he ruling?
The truth was, he didn’t want to make a ruling. That was clear from the moment Marvin Miller and John Gaherin sat down with Seitz in his magnificent apartment at the Dakota. It was the first week of December. A few days had passed since the hearings. The view of Central Park was terrific, the coffee served by Mrs. Seitz was bracing, and the look on Seitz’s face was pensive. On the threshold issue, he told Miller and Gaherin, he had arrived at a decision: the matter was within his jurisdiction.
“Now the fat’s in the fire,” he said. “We’re dealing with issues that are very important to both sides. This may be the most serious grievance I’ve ever been asked to deal with. If I decide this, somebody’s going to get hurt.”
He turned to Gaherin.
“Your boss said this should be negotiated, not arbitrated,” he said.
“Bowie’s not my boss.”
Seitz ignored that and plowed ahead.
“I notice the timing is most propitious for you to come to a negotiated settlement,” he said, referring to the coming Basic Agreement talks. “What are the possibilities, given enough time, for resolving this problem among yourselves? I’m prepared to be of whatever service the parties want of me.”
“We’ve always wanted to negotiate this,” said Miller. “We’ve been trying to negotiate this since 1967.”
“I’m perfectly willing to negotiate,” said Gaherin. “I don’t want you to do this if we can make some accommodation. But I’ll have to consult with my people.”
Miller asked only for a time limit.
“I’ll have to have a resolution of this by February, because of spring training,” he said.
Seitz nodded.
“If the two of you bargain I’ll mediate, if that’s acceptable to you,” he said.
Both men nodded concurrence and the meeting broke up, with only a final word from the arbitrator to the PRC chief on his way out.
“Look, take this case out of my hands,” said Seitz. “Negotiate with the players and settle your differences.”
Gaherin headed off for baseball’s winter meetings at the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. Seitz had followed up his meeting with a letter, putting in writing his plea to negotiate and offer to mediate.
“He doesn’t want to decide this case,” Gaherin told the PRC board. “He says there’s too much at stake for both sides and both sides should try to resolve this.”
What to do? The PRC members pored over the letter, analyzing its every word and comma. Bob Howsam and the Orioles’ Frank Cashen, ever the hawks, wouldn’t hear of negotiating. Why fight the case only to cave? Ed Fitzgerald, the moderate, listened closely to Gaherin, who strongly favored negotiating.
“If Seitz wrote the letter, doesn’t it behoove us to try?” he said. “What have we got to lose by finding out the other side’s position?”
Sitting in on the meeting, conspicuously silent, was Bowie Kuhn. The great advocate of bargaining—at least in Seitz’s presence—wouldn’t back up Gaherin before the PRC. He fell back on his legal brain trust.
“What do the lawyers think?” asked Kuhn.
“I’d say we’ve got a fifty percent chance of winning the case,” said Hoynes, who came out against bargaining.
“I’d say fifty percent,” Garner concurred.
“John?” asked Kuhn.
“I say ‘shit,’ ” was Gaherin’s response. “If you read this the way I do here’s what Seitz is saying: ‘Let this chalice pass from me, Father, but if I have to drink it I’m going to spit it all over you.’ ”
The PRC courageously sidestepped the decision, opting to put the matter before the rest of the Lords. Then they joined them at the elite Indian River Club, an escape venue from the rest of the baseball rabble at the Diplomat.
Kuhn interrupted the hum of conversation to make an announcement: “John has a report for you.”
Gaherin repeated his assessment. They were likely to lose the Messersmith case. They’d been invited by Seitz to negotiate, and, in his judgment, their best chance was to offer the union some limited form of free agency.
The howling commenced promptly.
“How much have you got invested in baseball?” shouted Charlie Finley.
“I don’t have enough to pay for my carfare,” said Gaherin.
“You want to give away this industry!” roared Gussie Busch. “Bullshit! Bullshit!”
“What makes you think we’re going to lose?” asked Lou Susman, his lawyer.
Well, Gaherin replied, his reading of Seitz and his own reading of the contract.
“Well, then, you’re not the one to represent our interests,” Susman shot back.
Fitzgerald jumped to Gaherin’s defense.
“John, in my judgment, is right,” he said. “We’re not giving anything away by talking to them.”
But he was the only one to counter the howlers, Kuhn having again fallen mute. Susman interrogated Gaherin further, the braying ran its course, and the PRC chief finally turned to his assistant, Barry Rona. “Let’s get this thing over,” he said.
Gaherin called Miller, who was holding meetings of his own (with the union’s executive council) in nearby Bal Harbour. They arranged to meet at his hotel, where they settled onto the balcony of Dick Moss’s room with coffee.
“There’s no change in our position,” said Gaherin, before the refreshments had even begun to cool. “The clubs feel they have a vested right in the player.”
Miller heaved one of his deep sighs.
“If that’s it then you should call Seitz,” he said.
There was some brief desultory talk, then Gaherin left to do just that.
“The answer is: there’s no change in our position,” he told the arbitrator. “So turn the crank.”
It was two weeks later, just two days before Christmas, when Seitz summoned Miller and Gaherin again. He had a decision. It was sixty-four pages long, elaborately reasoned and laden with footnotes. But both men skipped all that and flipped right to the back for the result: “The grievances of Messersmith and McNally are sustained. There is no contractual bond between these players and the Los Angeles and the Montreal clubs, respectively.”
Miller, glowing, signed the line that said “Assent.” Gaherin scribbled his signature on the “Dissent” line, then looked up at Seitz.
“That’s that and this is for you,” he said, handing him a letter that said he was fired as baseball’s arbitrator. “Peter, I’m sorry. I love you dearly, but you’re out.”
The news swept through baseball like the first reports of Pearl Harbor.
Clark Griffith was at a Christmas party when he heard it on the radio. “Oh, shit,” was all he could say.
People stared. Griffith tried to explain about the apocalypse being at hand. But everyone drifted back to their revelry. He was left muttering darkly to himself.
John McHale spread the word to the Expos’ investors.
“This is a disaster,” he said, “but not nearly as much a disaster for other cities as Montreal. We’ve got so many negatives in drawing and keeping players here.”
Plenty of baseball men weren’t satisfied with merely firing Seitz. They wanted him to face a firing squad. As Seitz himself later put it, the owners’ wails “sounded like the last five minutes of the Gotterdammerung, or The Twilight of Baseball.”
Ted Simmons was choked up. Messersmith had done it. Everything was changed. “Curt Flood stood up for us; Jim Hunter showed us what was out there; Andy showed us the way,” he said. “Andy made it happen for us all. It’s what showed a new life.”
Messersmith himself was more happy for others than for himself. It had been a brutal experience, and he didn’t know where the road went for him now.
“I did it for the guys sitting on the bench,” he said, “the utility men who couldn’t crack the lineup with [the Dodgers] but who could make it elsewhere. These guys should have an opportunity to make a move and go to another club.
“I didn’t do it necessarily for myself because I’m making a lot of money. I don’t want everyone to think, ‘Well, here’s a guy in involuntary servitude at $115,000 a year.’ That’s a lot of bull and I know it.”
Little did Andy Messersmith yet know what “a lot of money” really was. He and many other players were about to find out.
10
MARVIN MILLER WAS like the dog that caught the bus. Now what did he do?
He could demand what Seitz had given him: total free agency. Every player had the right to play out his contract and walk. But Miller wasn’t one to swagger and plunder. In his new position of power, he was the same low-key, wily operator he had been when he was powerless. It was time to negotiate smart terms for the long run, not terms of surrender that would yield only short-term satisfaction.
Miller didn’t want to bleed the owners dry, no matter what they thought. It was a first tenet of the Steelworkers: healthy employers paid better wages and benefits than bankrupt ones. Miller thought some parts of the old structure needed to be preserved, even as others were destroyed. “Marvin wasn’t an anarchist,” said Gaherin. “He could see that the clubs spent a lot of money on farm teams and scouts. They had a right to players they’d developed for a certain period of time.”
Miller was, rather, an economist. He could also see that flooding the market with players would only depress salaries. It was the simple law of supply and demand. It was why Catfish Hunter had soared to $3.5 million: one player, twenty-four bidders.
Before he ever bargained with the owners, Miller would have to educate the players. He began leading discussions to determine what they wanted from the New Order. Some wanted Full Seitz, most notably Mike Marshall.
“I want what we’ve got,” he declared, “one and one [that is, the contract year plus the renewal year].”
The Socratic master jumped in.
“But are we talking about flooded markets here?” asked Miller. “That’s something we should talk about.”
They did, endlessly. Bob Boone finally reduced the issue to its essence at an executive board meeting.
“What do you think the players want more,” he asked, “the ability to move—total freedom of movement—or the ability to maximize their earning potential? Let’s try to answer that question in this room.”
They went around the table.
“Maximize movement,” said Mike Marshall. “You’ve got to have the ability to make your choices of where you want to go.”
He picked up support from Jerry Reuss and a few others. But the great majority came down on the other side: earnings, baby.
Marshall would hear none of it. “If you guys give up one-and-one I’m suing you all,” declared the dead-serious pitcher.
Miller, siding with the majority, tried to calm Marshall. “What looks like a move in their direction will work to our benefit in the future,” he said.
He and the player leaders started tinkering with different models. Their aim was to make free agency a vehicle that would drive the whole pay scale. “In any industry, if you took your most talented people and let them set the salary structure it would make everybody higher,” said Phil Garner of the A’s. “We wanted to let the very best players establish the scale.”
The trick was setting the free-agency threshold: high enough so it took a top player to reach it, low enough so he wasn’t washed up by the time he got there. They knew the owners would propose something like ten years—way too high. But how to counter? They were starting to feel more like actuaries than ballplayers—figuring average career lengths, percentages of players that made it to each successive year of service, and so on. But slowly a magic number began to emerge.
“The odds of a player getting to six years weren’t very good,” said Garner. “Somewhere around three years people began to drop off. If you made it to six, the odds were very high you’d make it to ten. Your very best players were the only ones who made it to six.”
Another nice thing about that number: “There was a chance a player could be eligible for free agency twice in his career—six years and twelve,” said Ted Simmons, now a staunch union activist.
“What we did was artificially limit the supply of free agents,” said Bob Boone. “If you came in behind it with salary arbitration, then everybody was artificially high.”
Salary arbitration, that pre-Messersmith sop, had an important post-Messersmith use. As Miller envisioned the system, players with two to five years’ experience would qualify for salary arbitration. They couldn’t be free agents, but they could compare themselves to free agents. The rising tide of salaries in the open market would lift all boats.
The Lords had crafted no such well-reasoned proposal. Their Cro-Magnon response was to lock the players out of spring training. The camps wouldn’t open, they announced, until there was a new labor contract. They would try to relieve the pressure on them by pressuring the players.
Some owners remained in severe denial. Messersmith had now gone up the line to a federal appeals court; maybe they’d win there. Some believed the Messersmith ruling applied only to Messersmith. They still shouldn’t allow free agency for others. “You guys make good money,” said Howsam at a meeting with players. “Why are you trying to do something that will ruin baseball?”
Charlie Finley argued the opposite. “Make ’em all free agents!” he declared. An owner had finally spoken out loud about the players’ most dreaded scenario. “Finley understood the market,” said Phil Garner, who played for him. “The other owners only understood monopolistic power.”
Marvin Miller heard of Finley’s proposal and held his breath.
