[George]

Marvin Miller took over as the Executive Director of the MLPBA in 1966. Prior to this time, as far as I am aware, there had been only one strike in the history of major league baseball. That occurred on May 18, 1912, when the Detroit Tigers refused to take the field to protest the suspension of Ty Cobb, who had gone into the stands to attack an abusive fan. Miller, a professional labor union activist, soon put an end to this long reign of peace by engineering his first strike during the season of 1972, in which 86 games were canceled. This worked so well that he tried another one in 1981, which was even more successful, with 713 games not played. By 1994 Marvin Miller had retired, and his protege, Donald Fehr, was in charge. Fehr gave us the greatest strike of all time, running from August of 1994 until April of 1995, including the 1994 World Series, which was canceled. To make it even better, many people believe that a direct result of this action was the demise of the Montreal Expos franchise, which had been leading the National League at the time that the 1994 season was suspended, leaving their fans so disappointed and disillusioned that they never recovered. Fehr, of course, could not take full credit for this glorious victory, since he could not have done it without the trailblazing leadership of the great Marvin Miller. The net result of these successful machinations was an enormous increase in the salaries of the players, to levels that were previously unimaginable.

I think that baseball fans like to see competition on the field, between the best players in the world. And it goes without saying (or, at least, it used to go without saying), that they like to do this at an affordable cost. If Marvin Miller contributed in any way to these admirable goals, I must be missing something.