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Originally Posted by Mark
My point was that Olberman does not make any sense in saying that someone who has had a big impact on the game, for good or for ill, deserves to be enshrined. I think you need to have helped the game to get in. Beyond that, I think that Miller et al did some real damage. In order to meet salary demands and to make a profit of their own, MLB schedules its playoff games during prime time in the east. Consequently, the most important innings of the most important games are played after midnight in the east. That will keep a genration of young fans from having the best memories of baseball. I concede that the reserve clause may not have been altogether just. But that doesn't mean that it was an altogether good thing. Most importantly, it allowed teams to keep some players for a decade or more. And as a young fan, I loved how my team had a core of players who had been with the team before I was born and how some players who played when I first started to follow the team (age 7) were still there when I finished college. It gave the club a sense of stability and recognizability that is now gone. Today, fans of poorer teams are afraid to get too worked up about a good player because they fear they will be lost to free agency. That is a shame. Jim VB says that a baseball team now functions like any other company. Ok, but I didn't get interested in professional baseball because it was like an ordinary business.
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Mark,
I guess Keith's comment is pointed toward the fact that there are clearly two sides to this argument, but from either side, you have to admit that Miller changed the game toward what it is today. That alone should make him a candidate for the HOF.
I'm not a kid. I was born in the mid 1950's so my first memories of baseball were pre-Marvin Miller. Sure, sometimes I miss the "old days", but they weren't really better, at least not for the players. When Miller took over the union, the average players salary was $19,000. When he left, 16 years later, it was $241,000. Back then, many, if not most, players had to work another job in the off season. Was that better?
Teams can still keep players they want for a decade or more. They just have to pay them fair market value. The Yanks just won a Series with Jeter, Possada, Pettitte and Rivera having played together for the better part of 15 years. My son is now 20. He doesn't remember a Yankee team withou that core (except for Andy's 3 years in Houston.) That "keeping teams together" thing was at the expense of the players and to the benefit of the owners.
I will never get upset with you, or anyone else on the other side of this discussion, because I understand your point, but the world is different now. And baseball has to be different too.
I did like it when every city had 2 newspapers (Heck, NYC had way more than that when I was a kid.), but that's not going to happen again. Money and technology have changed many things. That TV money is going somewhere and I'd prefer it go to the players, not the owners.