Journalist Studs Terkel, who wrote “Working,” the classic oral history of Americans’ on-the-job lives, called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.”

Miller, the United Mine Workers president for forty years and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ founder, took over a failing group that represented the nation’s most exploited but irreplaceable workers – the Major League Baseball Players Association — and converted it into the country’s most powerful union.

Miller’s introduction to labor negotiations came when he worked in the early 1950s for the United States Steel Workers Association, who along with the United Auto Workers represented America’s union strength. But an internal shake-up prompted Miller to seek new employment. He turned down a faculty position at Harvard University when Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts asked him to consider becoming the executive director of the player’s union.

But getting the job wasn’t easy.

Team owners hoped that by repeatedly stalling they would force Miller, who still had no fixed plan to fund the union, to give up. Owners also tried to persuade unconvinced players Miller would lead them into a strike few of them could afford.

Their heavy-handedness infuriated the players, who unified their support behind Miller and unanimously elected him as their union’s executive director in 1966.

By 1968, Miller had negotiated the union’s first collective bargaining agreement with team owners, which won the players a whopping increase in their minimum salary of $7,000 to $10,000, plus larger expense allowances that covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons.

Miller advised superstar outfielder Curt Flood in the historic 1972 Flood v. Kuhn case, which reached the Supreme Court. At stake was coveted free agency. The court ruled against Flood, 5-3-1, but his lawsuit opened the door for other MLB players to challenge the reserve clause.

On Dec. 23, 1975, Peter Seitz, the neutral arbitrator, awarded Major League Baseball players — both present and future — the greatest Christmas present they would ever receive. He ruled that clause 10(a) of a player’s contract, reserving an unsigned player to his current team, was only valid for one year. After that, a ballplayer could become a free agent if the contract remained unsigned.

Free agency, resulting from the 1974 case of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and the Baltimore Orioles’ Dave McNally — whom Miller encouraged to sit out a year — was on the horizon. After filing a grievance, Messersmith and McNally won free agency and signed new contracts with the Atlanta Braves and the Montreal Expos, respectively.

During Miller’s tenure, baseball suffered through strikes and lockouts that angered fans. But the average player’s annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982, the year Miller left the player’s union. Miller died in 2012 and didn’t live long enough to see the explosion in player salaries.

In 2024, Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way player, Shohei Ohtani will earn $70 million, the average player salary is $5 million, and the minimum player income is $750,000.

After being rejected six times in Hall of Fame voting — four times by the Veterans Committee, and twice by the Expansion Era Committee, both dominated by owners and baseball executives — in 2008, four years before his death at age 95, Miller told the Boston Globe he held the Hall of Fame in contempt and was indifferent to his induction. He called the vote “rigged” and the members “handpicked to reach a particular outcome,” Miller said, “At age 91, I can do without the farce.”

Thankfully, the Modern Baseball Era Committee inducted Miller into the Hall of Fame in 2020.

Miller was among baseball’s three most impactful figures, sharing the honor with Babe Ruth, who changed the way the game is played, and Jackie Robinson, who paved the way for Black players to enter the Major Leagues.

Not bad company.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.