Who's on first? Marvin Miller

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[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M&feature=related"]Who's on first? - YouTube[/ame]​

Who's on first? Marvin Miller


“I think he’s the most important baseball figure of the last 50 years,” former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent told the Associated Press. “He changed not just the sport but the business of the sport permanently, and he truly emancipated the baseball player — and in the process all professional athletes.”

When Mr. Miller took over the players union, the minimum salary was $7,000. Today, it is $480,000. Major league players now earn on average more than $3 million a year.

His other triumphs included the right to collective bargaining, the right to use agents to negotiate contracts, arbitration in labor disputes and the contractual ability of players to block trades to other teams. The model Mr. Miller created for baseball players was later copied by unions in other sports, including the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.




Marvin Miller (95) was diagnosed with cancer but what probably killed him was watching the Republican party destroy the American labor movement while simultaneously supporting corporate outsourcers.
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Don Fehr: "Marvin possessed a combination of integrity, intelligence, eloquence, courage and grace that is simply unmatched in my experience," Fehr said in the MLBPA's statement announcing Miller's death. "Without question, Marvin had more positive influence on Major League Baseball than any other person in the last half of the 20th century. It was a rare privilege for me to be able to work for him and with him. All of us who knew him will miss him enormously."
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