Torre, La Rusa & Cox get the call.....

[BradH]

Originally Posted by calvindog

Nuts that Marvin Miller hasn't gotten in yet.

Ummm.... No, not surprising at all.

Jeff - I appreciate many of your posts here and I know you have a fine collection, and maybe you can enlighten me, but over the last 20 or so years no one in the "Marvin Miller camp" has ever been able to tell me a single thing that he did FOR THE GAME.

--Increase player salaries thru free agency and arbitration? Sure.
--Increase player endorsement dollars? Absolutely.
--Help the players realize that by using the disabled list instead of playing thru injuries, they can better their chances for more personal money (even if they're hurting their team)? Yep.
--Increase the rights of players to the point that the union could fight for cheaters? You betcha.

Marvin Miller should be in a lot of Halls of Fame (maybe he is, I don't know):
--Union Hall of Fame (first ballot, I'm sure)
--Lawyer Hall of Fame
--Agent Hall of Fame
--Endorsement Hall of Fame
--Arbitration Hall of Fame

If I had a vote, I'd put him in all of the above and then some. But I would never put him in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In general, even the players he helped to make millions of dollars haven't supported him in this.

Originally Posted by Paul S

Punishing only the players? PEDs roll uphill. A couple of players on a team help garner more wins and larger contracts for themselves. As a result the manager also gets extended and more dough. Then so do the GMs. Teams owners pat themselves on the back (of their bank account) and regional cable advertising revenue, and flatter the Commissioner. You mean to tell me that none of them, the Commisioner included, had/has never an idea.

See above (regarding Marvin Miller and the Basic Agreement he fought so hard for). No one seems to remember that the managers and GMs and owners, despite numerous attempts to intervene, were expressly prohibited from stepping in. I'm not saying they would have, but they couldn't if they'd tried. The MLBPA was steadfastly against any kind of PED testing until the early 2000s and it was not allowed by the Basic Agreement.

Point all the fingers you want about who knew what, but the players had it in their power to implement testing as early as 1994. Plain and simple.