Alex Rodriguez should study MLB’s labor history

It’s too bad the  embatteld Yankees slugger doesn’t have MLB’s first labor boss, Marvin Miller, to  consult with, since it was Miller who guaranteed A-Rod’s right to arbitration  hearing as opposed to the days when the commissioner handed out punishments  unilaterally.

   NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Saturday, November 23, 2013, 10:40 AM

Updated: Saturday, November 23, 2013, 9:55 PM

Corey Sipkin/New York Daily  News

A-Rod needs to spend a little time studying baseball history before calling  arbitration ‘a farce’.

Long after his retirement as the first executive director of the Major  League Baseball Players Association, Marvin  Miller would often lament how so many of the modern day players took for  granted the benefits they had and had no idea how they were achieved. I can only  imagine what Miller would’ve thought about Alex  Rodriguez storming out of his arbitration hearing last week and declaring it  “a farce” and “an abusive process designed to ensure the player fails.” Say  what?

Whether A-Rod knows it or not — and clearly he doesn’t — arbitration in  baseball is the single-biggest achievement of Miller’s reign, the bedrock of the  players’ riches and freedoms today. Before Miller was able to successfully  negotiate an arbitration process to settle baseball grievances in 1970, the  baseball commissioner ruled supreme insofar as meting out punishment and  deciding disputes between players and clubs. Prior to that 1970 labor  negotiation, then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn staunchly resisted the idea of  relinquishing any of his powers but ultimately relented when the owners’ labor  rep, John Gaherin, assured him that arbitration would only cover all the petty  grievances between players and clubs and would not in any way erode his “best  interests of the game” and “integrity of the game” powers.

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It sounded like a small gain for Miller — “some crumbs just to satisfy him,”  as Gaherin explained it to the owners. And then, four years later, people began  to realize just how monumental it was when Catfish Hunter filed a breach of  contract grievance against Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley over Finley’s  failure to pay an insurance policy premium as specified in Hunter’s contract. As  this was a dispute between a player and a club, it went to arbitration whereby  Peter Seitz, the first baseball arbitrator, ruled against Finley and made Hunter  baseball’s first free agent. A year later, Seitz was called upon again to  arbitrate a far bigger issue — the dispute between the owners and players about  the interpretation of the reserve clause in players’ contracts that, until then,  had effectively bound players for life to their teams. Miller argued the clause  stipulated a player who refused to sign his contract could have the contract  renewed only once, while the owners contended it could be renewed in perpetuity.  At first, Seitz implored the owners to negotiate a settlement of the issue with  Miller, but they refused, choosing to take their chances in arbitration. They  lost. Seitz ruled against them and thus opened the floodgates to free  agency.

Through the years, as A-Rod might care to know, the arbitration process that  Miller won for the players has accounted for untold millions for them. Besides  free agency and, later, salary arbitration, arbitrators ruled against the owners  in three collusion cases in the ’80s, awarding the players some $113 million in  damages. And in two of the most notable drug cases, arbitrators substantially  lowered the suspensions of LaMarr Hoyt of the Padres in 1987 (one year to 60  days) and Steve Howe of the Yankees (life to 119 days) in 1992.

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Arbitration in baseball further evolved when, in 2002, the owners and  players agreed to implement it to decide cases in the joint drug agreement.

Arbitration in baseball is the  single-biggest achievement of Marvin Miller’s reign.

In trashing that agreement in his orchestrated snit fit last Wednesday and  essentially aborting the arbitration process, A-Rod and his dream team of  lawyers cried foul at arbitrator Fredric Horowitz’s ruling that commissioner Bud  Selig didn’t have to testify under oath. Though they failed to ask a  commissioner to testify in any of the previous joint drug agreement cases,  players union officials cited the fact that, in previous arbitration cases  before 2002, like the collusion one with Peter Ueberroth and the Howe one with  Fay Vincent, whenever they called for a commissioner to testify the commissioner  complied. But that was because those cases were the result of grievances over  the commissioner using his “best interests” powers. At the same time, in the  previous 12 joint drug agreement cases that went before an arbitrator since  2002, the players testified in all of them.

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Only A-Rod did not. And only the most naive observer of all this couldn’t  see through his reason for not testifying, claiming he wasn’t able to face his  accuser, Selig. A-Rod was never going to testify. Not when he could state his  case, without being under oath, in the friendly confines of Mike Francesa’s WFAN  radio studio.

Meanwhile, A-Rod’s attorneys appear bent on further blowing up the  arbitration process and the joint drug agreement by violating the  confidentiality clause and revealing all the (selected?) testimony from the  hearing.

Here’s how one baseball attorney summed up what happened last week: “I  believe (Selig) should have testified, even though the rules of the drug  agreement are that neither the player nor the commissioner can be compelled to  testify. At the same time, however, (A-Rod) should have never blown out of the  hearing like that, and he and his lawyers should never have trashed the process  and undermined the joint drug agreement like they did by not completing their  case. It’s like in a game where a team is trailing by one run, with two outs and  the bases loaded and the batter is called out on strikes on a pitch that’s  clearly outside. Do you just storm off the field and have the game declared a  forfeit?”

Marvin Miller would be shaking his head. And the union also ought to be  disgusted at what A-Rod and his lawyers have done to the drug agreement and the  arbitration process. Instead, they’ll probably wind up having to fire Horowitz  out of fear that A-Rod and his lawyers will come after them next.

BAIL MONEY I have to say I never cease to be amazed at  teams’ ability to unload untradeable contracts. It happened again last week when  Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski was able to unload the seven years and $138 million  remaining on Prince Fielder’s contract through 2020 (when he’ll presumably weigh  400 pounds) on the Texas Rangers for second baseman Ian Kinsler and $30 million.  Dombrowski didn’t want Fielder in the first place, but his owner, Mike Ilitch,  wanted a winner while he was still alive to enjoy it and allowed himself to get  bamboozled by Fielder’s agent, Scott Boras, two years ago when nobody was left  in the bidding. I suspect even Boras might be a little puzzled by this trade,  given the fact that the most the Rangers were willing to offer for Fielder two  years ago was four years. This reminds me of something Gene Michael told Buck  Showalter back in 1995 about untradeable contracts. Showalter couldn’t stand  Danny Tartabull, who was in the fourth year of a five-year, $25 million deal  that, for the most part, had been unfulfilling, but conceded it was impossible  for the Yankees to trade him. When Michael declared he could trade anybody,  Showalter said: “Well if you can trade Tartabull I’ll kiss your butt at home  plate.” To that Michael began pulling down his pants and said: “I’ll save you  the embarrassment, you can do it right here.” He had just traded Tartabull for  Ruben Sierra, an equally underperforming player who had $11 million left on his  contract. “I told you I could trade anyone,” Michael said, laughing. “You didn’t  ask me what I’d get back.”