Baseball’s Labor Wars: A Brief History

John Montgomery Ward: shortstop, lawyer and union organiser

Today’s baseball fans, disgruntled whenever ballplayers making millions complain about schedules or meal money or rule changes and such, going out on strike and causing shortened seasons and even – gasp – cancelling the World Series, may long for the good old days, when the club owners controlled everything about the game and the players’ professional lives. 

Once having signed a contract, players were bound to that team forever under what was called the “reserve clause” in the contracts, on the owner’s terms. They could be traded or sold to another team, with or without their consent. They could play for the salary offered or stay home.

Contrary to myth, there was never a time when professional ballplayers “loved the game” so much, they would gladly have played for nothing.

As far back as the 19th century, they rebelled against the reserve clause, arbitrary fines, and such schemes as club owners classifying players and paying them according to what class level the owners assigned them.

John Montgomery Ward

The first players’ union organizer was New York Giants shortstop John Montgomery Ward, who was also a lawyer.

Under his leadership, in 1890 enough disgruntled players abandoned the major leagues to form a league of their own, the Players’ League, which lasted one season before going broke.

Robert Murphy

Over the years there were sporadic but unsuccessful efforts to form a players’ union. Two world wars later, in 1946, a labor relations lawyer named Robert Murphy decided to form a union called the American Baseball Guild. His first target was Pittsburgh, a heavily unionized city, where he thought the players would get public support.

When club owner William Benswanger refused to see him, Murphy arranged a meeting with the Pirates’ players in the clubhouse on June 7 before a night game against the Giants. He urged the players to go out on strike unless their demands were met.

Second baseman Frank Gustine, who had been with the Pirates for eight years, later recalled, “The club owner, William Benswanger, was liked by the players, even though he would not come down and talk to us about our grievances.”

In the meeting Murphy said, “I can get him down here. Just threaten not to play.”

The players who had been with the Pirates the longest were divided. Veteran infielder Lee Handley spoke up in favor of going out on strike. Gustine, who had been with the Pirates for eight years, spoke against it, as did thirty-nine-year-old pitcher Rip Sewell. 

A two-thirds vote was needed to authorize a strike. The motion got more than fifty percent but missed   the two-thirds by two votes.

Frank Gustine; 

Benswanger would not talk to Murphy before that, but now he did. The following spring, we got what we called Murphy money -- $25 a week for expenses during spring training. We had never gotten anything before. Then the pension talk began. Everything they have today began with Robert Murphy, yet today’s players never heard of him.

J. Norman Lewis

Fast forward to 1958. Yankees pitcher Bob Turley was the team players representative. The union head was J. Norman Lewis.

We proposed to the owners that they allocate 20 percent of all their baseball income to players’ salaries. I’ve never seen grown men act like we just killed them. I remember Buzzy Bavasi of the Dodgers saying, “You mean to tell me, we came in next to last and just because we drew four million and made a lot of money, we gotta pay you guys 20 percent of it?” Boston’s Tom Yawkey’s on the other side and he says, “Here’s my books. I’m already paying that now.”

Today they’d be the happiest people in the world if they’d signed that contract.

Marvin Miller

The players’ efforts to break the chains of the hated reserve clause, launching the free agency era, finally succeeded in 1975. The players’ union, now headed by Marvin Miller, had secured a commitment from club owners to submit any disputes they could not resolve to binding arbitration by a neutral arbitrator.

The Dodgers’ top reliever, Mike Marshall, was the team’s player rep as well as a league player rep and negotiator. He took the role seriously, studying players’ grievances and club owners’ positions. In 1974 he pitched in 106 games and won the Cy Young Award. One of his teammates was pitcher Andy Messersmith, who’d been 20-6 and finished second in the Cy Young voting.

This is Marshall’s story:

Andy asked me a lot of questions about how I could pitch so often. One day I noticed he was unable to feed himself with his pitching arm. After the season I asked him to come to Michigan State, where I was going to graduate school for a PhD. We did a study that showed us the destructive processes of the traditional pitching motion on our pitching arms.

While Andy was there, I said to him, “This reserve clause the owners have put in our contracts is open to interpretation. It says that they can renew our contracts for one year. They think they can renew it every year for one year. I think it can be interpreted that they can renew it for only one year and that would be it. You’d be a free agent at the end of that year. Tell you what we’ll do. You and I will both not sign [1975] contracts. I’ll be the lead dog.  [Club owner Peter] O’Malley will talk with me and I’ll just shine them on until the end of the season.”

When I went to the Dodgers in ’74, I had said to them, “I’m going to win the Cy Young Award and I want to be compensated for that. I’ll sign for what you want now” – something like $86,000, big money back then –“but next year I want to make a minimum of $130,000, and if I win the Cy Young, I expect a big bonus on top of that. And I’m always going to sign a contract with you that includes a minimum for the following year.”

I won the Cy Young, got a $20,000 bonus for that, and they wrote the ’75 contract for $150,000. So now, using the strategy Andy and I had planned, I’m holding out on a contract they already have that includes the terms I had earlier agreed to. They took it to the Players Association who said, in effect, I had signed a two-year contract.  I wasn’t thinking about doing that when I’d signed in ’74. So I couldn’t challenge it, couldn’t “not sign” what I’d already agreed to.

That left Andy alone. He went through with it. [Montreal pitcher] Dave McNally did too, but he had already decided to retire. Andy was still a star.

Andy Messersmith won in arbitration, and became a free agent.

And that’s how so many players today have become millionaires.