Should Bud Selig be a Hall of Famer?

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by Griffins

Marvin Miller, on the other hand, should be in.

Yep, right along with Adolph Hitler and Stalin! Miller's the guy who exposed the players for the mercenaries they were waiting desperately to become, the one who let us know almost all of them would grind any notion of team loyalty into the dust in return for the time and money the organization had invested in them, and go play elsewhere for an additional buck and a quarter! He's also most likely the guy who advised the players to cover their greedy butts with the statement that "I have to do what's best for my family." As if those 17 generations of little Pujols to come couldn't have been quite well taken care of through accepting the Cardinals' offer of $215 million, or so. Left to their own devices, almost all the players will always make the wrong decision, because they base it only on ME, ME, ME! Just my two cents worth, of course.

Bud had some difficult choices to make during his reign, and I think handled them quite well under the circumstances (I do think that Bonds, Clemons, McGwire, Sosa and others similarly situated will eventually get in the Hall, because they were simply the best of their era--and who's to say that Ruth, Gehrig and Foxx and company didn't actually have it easier insofar as hitting was concerned, with the pitchers' best weapons suddenly taken away from them--the scuffed, spit upon, dark and dirty, pounded to a pulp balls; virtually no relief specialists and the starter being expected to go a full nine; no sliders, for the most part, no split finger fastballs, no circle changes that break like a screwball but without the elbow strain, and no night games or jet lag. Take a look at what guys like Hornsby and Sisler did in the dead-ball era, compared to post-1919 play). Hmmm...sounds like an interesting topic for a separate thread!

Please pardon my ranting guys. Wish all of you the best,

Larry

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by ls7plus

Yep, right along with Adolph Hitler and Stalin! Miller's the guy who exposed the players for the mercenaries they were waiting desperately to become, the one who let us know almost all of them would grind any notion of team loyalty into the dust in return for the time and money the organization had invested in them, and go play elsewhere for an additional buck and a quarter! He's also most likely the guy who advised the players to cover their greedy butts with the statement that "I have to do what's best for my family." As if those 17 generations of little Pujols to come couldn't have been quite well taken care of through accepting the Cardinals' offer of $215 million, or so. Left to their own devices, almost all the players will always make the wrong decision, because they base it only on ME, ME, ME! Just my two cents worth, of course.

Please pardon my ranting guys. Wish all of you the best,

Larry

A similar thought has actually crossed my mind(minus the Hitler and Stalin part). I think ultimately, it's just a double edged sword. Which is honestly the same view that I hold on most unions. At their core and the principles on which they were founded, I find them to be very necessary. However, I think they've somewhat overgrown their purpose, and gotten to the point where they are just plain exploitive. Sadly, I say this as a proud member of a union(if that makes any sense). I don't know how much of the negative aspects can really be pinned on Mille though. I would wait a bit longer, so that we can fully see what the ultimate effect that his contribution will have had on the game, before making a final decision on him.

In a very similar breath. Why doesn't anyone talk about Curt Flood? Not as a player, but as a pioneer. The guy basically gave up his career by fighting the reserve clause. That to me deserves enshrinement..

[nolemmings]

I have no respect and never will for anyone who would compare Marvin Miller to Hitler or Stalin.

[dgo71]

Originally Posted by nolemmings

I have no respect and never will for anyone who would compare Marvin Miller to Hitler or Stalin.

+100

It's easy to look at today's players and call them greedy or selfish. But stop for a minute and think about their side of it. They have to work exceptionally hard to get to that point, making tons of personal sacrifices along the way. They are on the road roughly 3/4 of the year, away from their families and friends and have only a finite time in the game to make their money. Wouldn't you, at your job, want to be rewarded according to your performance at that job? And if you excelled at said job, wouldn't you want...no, EXPECT...to be in the top tier of the pay range? It just so happens that sports have a much higher revenue than our 9-to-5 lives thanks to billion dollar TV contracts, memorabilia sales, etc.

Also, do you have any idea what things were like PRE-Marvin Miller? All the derogatory statements you made about players would just as easily apply to the owners, who kept the lion's share of the revenue to themselves and basically held players under their thumb. Comiskey immediately comes to mind as the Scrooge to the White Sox players' Tiny Tim(s).

All that said, it's one thing to disagree with what Miller did (the executives who fought against him sure do, which is why he's not already a HOFer) but to compare him to an orchestrator of mass genocide is ridiculous and without merit.

[Hot Springs Bathers]

There is a wonderful line in Frank Deford's new autobiography pertaining to the commissioners in each sport. He says that the baseball owners only keep Selig in office because they all know that they are smarter than him.

[howard38]

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[ls7plus]

I think some of you took my admittedly slanted sense of humor a bit too seriously. However, I certainly will not retreat from the position that Miller's "contribution" to the game was largely negative. There are essentially three groups that matter when it comes to any professional sport: (1) the owners; (2) the fans; and (3) the players. Miller's "work" was irrefutably adverse to the financial interests of the first two, and only arguably beneficial to the third. I would argue that the fans are the most important of the three, as without them, there simply is no professional game (I once asked Lem Barney, a personal friend of mine, how many HOF'ers there would be without the fans. To his credit, he got the answer absolutely correct: "none"). Of the three groups, only the owners and fans are really here to stay for any significant period, as the average player's career is something on the order of 3-5 years. Most of them are quite similar to the extras in movies like "Spartacus," or "Ben Hur"--essential to the production, yes, but a lot like widgets in the sense that they are to a large degree interchangeable. I would argue that it makes little sense to compensate them to the degree that is currently being done, when each and every one of them would rather clearly play for $200,000 or less per year (virtually none of them have any occupational alternatives that would allow them to earn anywhere close to that). My conclusion is that Miller's union has therefore produced a higher level of salaries than their skills really merit, i.e., what they could earn on a truly open market (and to have such a market, all of them, as Charley Finley originally suggested, would have to be made free agents every year--the limitations on free agency from year to year simply act to keep the supply down, and prices high). It is also an irrefutable matter of economic law that when a group organizes to exert upward pressure upon wages and succeeds to the point where such compensation is significantly higher than the skills brought to the market could merit in one that is truly free and open, then someone has to subsidize that rate of compensation. In the private sector, it is the consumer. In the public sector, it is the taxpayer.

Most of these guys are simply here today and gone tomorrow, never leaving any real lasting impression on the game, with a few obvious exceptions. It is simply my personal opinion that by so limiting the supply of free agents on a yearly basis, salaries are being kept substantially higher than the average player is truly worth. That situation has directly contributed to the use of PED's in the game by making it worth taking the risk of exposure from a financial standpoint to cheat (after all, who really cares if you're caught, so long as you've got 30 million dollars or so in your pocket?). Can anyone say "Balco East?"

Thus, in conclusion, while Miller is indeed truly famous, I would hardly consider him worthy of any serious consideration for the hall of fame.

Sorry if I offended anyone by my earlier post, which was meant only as a point of emphasis, rather than a moral commentary on Mr. Miller.

Thanks for listening, and best wishes to all members.

Larry