Today is Labor Day, and I wanted to share with you an interview I did more than 30 years ago with one of the most influential labor leaders of our time
In 1966, Marvin Miller – an economist by training – was elected executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.
By the time he retired 16 years later, Miller had helped transform not just the players association but the entire professional sports industry.
Miller negotiated the players’ first-ever collective bargaining agreement with team owners in 1968.
And it was Miller’s leadership, and the courage of St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood, that brought an end to the longtime “reserve clause” that effectively let owners treat players as properties to be bought and sold.
It’s largely because of Marvin Miller that the concept of free agency now exists in not just baseball, but across professional sports.
Red Barber once said Marvin Miller was one of the two or three most important people in all of baseball history.
Miller wrote a book in 1991, called A Whole Different Ballgame. That’s when I got a few minutes with this icon of labor.
So here now, from 1991, Marvin Miller.
Marin Miller died in 2012 at the age of 95. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame seven years later.