Veterans Committee gets it wrong with former union leader Marvin Miller

By Bill Madden
New York Daily News
Tuesday, December 4th 2007, 4:00 AM



Hurley/News
MLBPA director Marvin Miller (c.) announces end of baseball strike on April 13, 1972 as (from left) Boston's Gary Peters, Dodger Wes Parker, counsel Dick Moss, and Cardinal Joe Torre look on.

NASHVILLE - This time, the poobahs of the Hall of Fame had vowed to get it right, maintaining they'd eliminated the politics and cronyism that had resulted in previous Veterans Committees either electing the wrong people to Cooperstown or, in the case of the last three elections, no people at all.

Unfortunately, Monday's results proved they've only got it half right. The committee of 16 that elected Dick Williams and Billy Southworth from the managers/umpires category did its job and did it well. Their records - each with four pennants and two world championships - speak for themselves as two of the greatest managers in history.

The other committee of 12, assigned to pass judgment on executives and pioneers, ought to be ashamed of itself. This is not to denigrate Bowie Kuhn, who, as commissioner from 1969-84 was a fierce defender of the game's integrity and made millions for the owners in TV and marketing revenue advances, or Walter O'Malley, who opened up the gateway to the West Coast for baseball while breaking a million hearts in Brooklyn, or Barney Dreyfuss, the first Pittsburgh Pirates owner and father of the first World Series. They were all worthy electees. But three paltry votes for Marvin Miller from this committee is an absolute joke.

It just goes to show how the vast majority of this committee could not bring itself to serve in the historian role for which the panel was entrusted. The majority obviously couldn't get past the animosity it and its management cohorts felt toward Miller over all the gains he won for the players on the other side of the bargaining table.

In short, the members put politics right back into this election process. Otherwise, on what criteria does one judge an executive? Impact and influence on the game? I would submit that the three people in the history of baseball who have had the most impact and influence on the game were Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and Marvin Miller and I would challenge any member of that committee to name anyone who had more.

But then just look at the makeup of the committee: Seven of the 12 - former American League president Bobby Brown, Orioles president Andy MacPhail, Twins president Jerry Bell, Royals owner David Glass, Phillies chairman Bill Giles, Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt and former Red Sox CEO John Harrington - were or are owners/chief executives who either did battle with Miller or were closely associated with Miller foes in management. Only one member of the committee - Twins Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew - was a player who benefited from the many gains won by Miller in collective bargaining.

ask you, how does Jerry Bell, whose prime responsibilities with the Twins have been in stadium operations, or David Glass, the king of revenue-sharing pocketing who's owned the Royals for all of seven years, or that old phony Harrington, the failed caretaker of the Red Sox, qualify as baseball historians? At least DeWitt, MacPhail and Giles come from baseball families, although, presumably, none of them could bring himself to look at Miller from a historical standpoint, either.

At the same time, you have to ask: Who selected this committee and why weren't more Hall of Famers and acknowledged students of the game such as Ralph Kiner, Tom Seaver, Joe Morgan or Bob Feller on it? No one from the Hall of Fame was willing to offer a straight answer to that question yesterday, although Seaver did say he believed the fact he and Morgan are on the Hall's board of directors may have been the reason they weren't asked to serve. If so, that's incredibly misguided reasoning - especially if it meant filling up the 12-man committee with the likes of Glass and Harrington, whose baseball accomplishments are nil.

"It's sad if people allowed their personal feelings to override the historical importance, the magnitude and the impact on the game of Marvin," Seaver said by phone from Calistoga, Calif. "The irony is he ended up making millions for the owners because he made them push the envelope, revise their business plan and take the game to a different level. How many years did the players have chains on them? A hundred? How can you underestimate what Marvin did?"

Indeed, how can you write the definitive history of baseball and not have Marvin Miller prominently mentioned throughout? And yet, this new and revised Veterans Committee of so-called historians saw fit to give more votes to Ewing Kauffman, whose contributions to the game consisted of being the first owner of the Royals.

They walked away from the press conference Monday undoubtedly feeling proud of themselves for electing three people to the Hall from this very subjective category where there are no statistics to measure a candidate's worthiness. In fact, by so totally dismissing the one candidate who towered over all the others, they merely come out looking petty and very small.