When Marvin Miller took over as the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, I knew he was going to be a success the minute he was hired. Before him, the guys who came in to run the union were fans who kept trying to keep the teams playing while they were negotiating with the owners.
Most people are fans. When a player goes to an outside arbitrator who rules on whether you’re going to get a raise, nine out of ten times the ballplayer wins, because nine out of ten of the arbitrators are fans. They want to get to know these players. They want these players to leave tickets for them.
When Marvin Miller walked in, he wasn’t a fan. He had been a tough-nosed head of the steelworkers union. He knew if he took the players and had them walk, baseball would be stuck with Triple-A players, and the fans wouldn’t want that. He had them go on strike over and over again to get what he wanted for the players. And he won big concessions.
Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner when Marvin came into baseball, was—to put it mildly—overmatched. Bowie seemed uptight and unsure of what to do. I was umpiring the All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, and in the middle of the game the lights dimmed. We stood around for five minutes. I was the first-base umpire, and I could see Bill Kunkel, the home-plate umpire, talking to Bowie in the stands. Finally I walked over there.
“Bill,” I said, “what the hell is going on?”
“The lights are all dim,” Bill said.
“Let me tell you something,” I said. “There isn’t a ballplayer in here who didn’t come up from the minor leagues and play under these conditions. Why don’t we ask both managers if we should continue? Ask them if they are willing to take the chance that the lights might come on when the other team is batting?”
Lasorda was one manager, and I can’t remember the other.
“Hell yes,” both agreed. “We’re used to this. Let’s go.”
It was typical of Bowie. He was likely to have sat there all night waiting and wondering what to do.
(Bud Selig wasn’t much better. Look what he did with one of the All-Star Games: He called the game a tie because the teams had run out of pitchers. He looked like a fool.)
Bowie didn’t have much respect for the umpires. While he was commissioner our salary was low, and we could feel that in the pecking order of Major League Baseball, we were at the very bottom.
After Bowie left in 1984, Peter Ueberroth took over as commissioner, and he was terrific. He would back the umpires all the way. I’m sorry the owners were able to get his job, because he had the right idea. If you threw someone out of the game, he’d hold a hearing and fine them, no matter what.
They got rid of him because he wanted to run baseball like a business, with him being the CEO and decision-maker, while the owners wanted to have their hands in it. As long as he was commissioner, things ran smoothly, but his having full control just didn’t sit well with the owners.
After Ueberroth they picked Bart Giamatti to be the commissioner in 1988. Bart, who had been the president of Yale University, wasn’t commissioner for a year. The thing he was best known for was kicking Pete Rose out of baseball and making him ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
It wasn’t long after Bart suspended Pete that Giamatti had a massive heart attack and died.
When we were in New York, Bart never failed to come into our dressing room and see us, no matter what. One day he came in, all sweaty. He was in a hurry.
“Here, boss,” I said. “Sit down.”
I put him in a chair.
“Now tell me,” I said, “what’s bothering you?”
“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I’m going upstairs for a meeting with all the general managers, and all they do is gripe about the fact that the old-time umpires were so much nicer than the group we have today. Tell me, Harv, is that true?”
“That’s absurd,” I said. “Let me count the ways.”
“Go ahead.”
I mentioned Jocko Conlan, Shag Crawford, Tony Venzon, and Al Barlick, the biggest of them all.
“I could go on,” I said. “These are the ones who come to mind. If you as much as opened your mouth, you were gone. No doubt in my mind, they were far tougher than the umpires today.”
“You’re serious,” Giamatti said.
“I’m dead serious. You go up there and ask the general managers what the hell they’re thinking. Have they ever been around when Al Barlick started hollering? He shook the whole stadium, and he had no fear of anybody. If someone hollered from the bench, he’d turn and walk eight or ten steps toward the bench and turn that voice loose, and he’d bury them. He’d say, ‘One more from you assholes, and you’re gone.’ That’s the way Al talked.”
Bart promised he’d go up there and tell them. I don’t know if he ever did.
Fay Vincent, a close friend of Bart’s, became the baseball commissioner in 1989, following Bart’s death. Fay was the best. We could trust him. When he took the job he said, “The umpires are my police force. And I will back them.”
I believe that Fay was kicked out by the owners because he cared too much about the players and the umpires. The owners wanted a commissioner who cared only about the owners, cared only about their bottom line, and so they picked one of their own: Bud Selig, who was the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. Since Bud took over, we have seen a corporatization of the game. The owners came at the players with a demonic vengeance to reduce everyone’s pay. The players went on strike in 1994, and the owners were so spiteful and stubborn that there was no World Series in 1994. They weren’t used to being treated so disdainfully.
Under Bud, no longer are there National League umpires and American League umpires. Now there are just umpires, and they aren’t under the league presidents, but rather under the commissioner’s rule. Umpires are now making more than $200,000 a year, but to get it they had to give up all their autonomy. We now have cameras in the ballparks to judge them. An umpire today spends every game with someone looking over his shoulder. Who can work that way?
The umpires went on strike in 1999. The argument was over getting more money for minor league umpires and for retired umpires. Just as the owners did with the players in 1994, they refused to budge. Richie Phillips, the lawyer for the umpires, decided the best thing would be for everyone to strike. Why not? It worked for the players. But they didn’t realize how much Major League Baseball was being corporatized. Once Bud Selig took over, everything became about the money. It was no different from the guys who bought companies, fired all the workers, and then sold the company and made millions. There was a ruthlessness about it.
They ran into a buzz saw. Twenty-two umpires were let go, and about half of them never got their jobs back. The umpires today have given up all their autonomy out on the field. They have none.