When I came across this WSJ piece I had hope. It started out pretty good.
"Marvin Miller, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 to 1982, said that when he assumed that post, ballplayers were “the most exploited group of workers I had ever seen—more exploited than the grape pickers ofCesar Chavez.” They were bound by “a reserve clause that made the players prisoners”with “no grievance procedure, no salary arbitration, no nothing.” Robert F. Burk’s book is the first comprehensive biography of Miller, the former steelworkers union official who transformed the toothless Players Association into what may be the nation’s most powerful private-sector union. Mr. Burk ranks Miller’s contributions to the sport with those of Babe Ruth,Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, calling Miller’s exclusion from baseball’s Hall of Fame an “inexplicable snub.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-marvin-miller-baseball-revolutionary-by-robert-f-burk-1428270574
Of, certainly a highly accurate paragraph. It quotes Burk' without disputing it, leading the reader to presume that the WSJ agrees with this opinion. I agree too, except, that's it's not so inexplicable, and it certainly wasn't hard to understand for Miller.
Meanwhile, his archenemy, the Crown Prince himself, Bowie Kuhn is in, and no doubt the abysmal Bud Selig will be in as well. It's not hard to understand: if you're for the rights of labor you don't get in, is you uphold the owners' interests, you get streets paved of gold named for you.
What is somewhat inexplicable, is this apparent agreement on this point from the WSJ. As noted in a previous post, Krugman points out that what conservatives-even those who call themselves 'libertarians'-are about is hardly 'liberty' but rather the preservation of traditional authority-after all, what exactly are they trying to 'conserve?'
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/on-americans-and-libertarianism.html
So in this vein, who is more conservative and libertarian than the Journal? Yet, they approve of the rise in power of MLB players? Of course not. Here, the writer gives the game away. Notice the technique-it's classic WSJ, and classic conservative-or 'libertarian.'
"As Mr. Burk puts it, Miller approached his dealings with baseball management with “the class-conscious intensity of a man molded by the ideological struggles of his younger days.” The author reveals that, in the 1930s, Miller was an ardent Popular Front leftist whose pro-Soviet views survived the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He was later a supporter of the Communist-backed Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace for president in 1948. One has to wonder if the conservative-minded Players Association (which once unsuccessfully pressed an astonished, newly appointed Miller to engage Richard Nixon as general counsel and co-leader) would have chosen Miller as its leader if its members had been aware of this political history."
So that's how the Journal takes issue with Miller here. Not by taking issue with his actual record, but by going Joe McCarthy on him: he's a Communist. Case closed. We now know why he doesn't belong in the Hall: he was a Communist.
My point I'm trying to focus on is how they do it here-it works pretty well. No? Listen to a commentator, Jeffrey McEarlen:
How ironic it is to learn that an unrepentant Communist had so much influence in "America's pastime." The flipside would be having Steve Forbes coach the Russian Hockey team.
Well that might have worked better than having John Dupont coach the American wrestling team!
http://www.biography.com/people/john-du-pont-21261947
http://nypost.com/2014/11/12/the-real-life-murder-tale-behind-channing-tatums-new-role/
So message received by the very impressionable and thoughtful, Jeffrey. This is the kind of guy it must be a pleasure to know.
You talk about Pavlov's Dog? I mean just ring the He was a Communist' bell and Mr. McEarlen commences foaming at the mouth.
Meanwhile, it's a lie. Miller was not a Communist or socialist.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-funny-thing-about-baseball-why.html
Miller and the players union had the one truly consistent pro capitalist position in baseball. The owners in all the big sports are the ones who want sociialism. For years they opposed free agency-which is a basic worker right of the capitalist system-to have labor mobility.
The owners wanted a salary cap, and when they fell on their face-in baseball; in the NFL they lacked a Marvin Miller and ended up with exactly that; even today NFL style 'free agency' is hardly free-and had to give up their precious salary cap they imposed a luxury tax and revenue sharing which in any case didn't lead to the 'small market' teams from spending more money on the players-thereby sort of falsifying the whole thesis that they wanted these things to achieve 'comeptitive balance.'
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/if-competitive-balance-matters-so-much.html
What this does then is give fans the worst of all worlds-the revenue redistribution doesn't lead to more spending by the alleged small market teams but takes away the incentive of the big market teams-like my NY Yankees-to spend more.
Again, if you believe that the WSJ is 'libertarian' this makes no sense. If you understand that this word is just a euphemism for reactionaries who want to bolster traditional authority it makes a lot of sense.
The goal of conservatives is not 'liberty'-even economic liberty as Miller's position promoted econoimc liberty at any term-while they slander him as a Communist. It's about traditional authority-the power of the owners over the players in this case.
What this episode shows is that their reactioary agenda is totally in line with socialism. The baseball owners are not capitalists but they are true conservatives.
The writer, Henry D. Fetter finishes off with this illogical idea:
"Miller’s unyielding defense of players accused of wrongdoing was criticized even by his admirers, as was his denial that steroid abuse was a problem and his opposition to the mandatory drug testing of players. He lambasted fans who complained that mediocre players were receiving inflated paychecks, saying that they were ignorant of the business realities of the sport. But Miller also understood that, as he told one team owner, “when it comes to collective bargaining, bankrupt is a dirty word.”
"Marvin Miller, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 to 1982, said that when he assumed that post, ballplayers were “the most exploited group of workers I had ever seen—more exploited than the grape pickers ofCesar Chavez.” They were bound by “a reserve clause that made the players prisoners”with “no grievance procedure, no salary arbitration, no nothing.” Robert F. Burk’s book is the first comprehensive biography of Miller, the former steelworkers union official who transformed the toothless Players Association into what may be the nation’s most powerful private-sector union. Mr. Burk ranks Miller’s contributions to the sport with those of Babe Ruth,Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, calling Miller’s exclusion from baseball’s Hall of Fame an “inexplicable snub.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-marvin-miller-baseball-revolutionary-by-robert-f-burk-1428270574
Of, certainly a highly accurate paragraph. It quotes Burk' without disputing it, leading the reader to presume that the WSJ agrees with this opinion. I agree too, except, that's it's not so inexplicable, and it certainly wasn't hard to understand for Miller.
Meanwhile, his archenemy, the Crown Prince himself, Bowie Kuhn is in, and no doubt the abysmal Bud Selig will be in as well. It's not hard to understand: if you're for the rights of labor you don't get in, is you uphold the owners' interests, you get streets paved of gold named for you.
What is somewhat inexplicable, is this apparent agreement on this point from the WSJ. As noted in a previous post, Krugman points out that what conservatives-even those who call themselves 'libertarians'-are about is hardly 'liberty' but rather the preservation of traditional authority-after all, what exactly are they trying to 'conserve?'
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/on-americans-and-libertarianism.html
So in this vein, who is more conservative and libertarian than the Journal? Yet, they approve of the rise in power of MLB players? Of course not. Here, the writer gives the game away. Notice the technique-it's classic WSJ, and classic conservative-or 'libertarian.'
"As Mr. Burk puts it, Miller approached his dealings with baseball management with “the class-conscious intensity of a man molded by the ideological struggles of his younger days.” The author reveals that, in the 1930s, Miller was an ardent Popular Front leftist whose pro-Soviet views survived the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He was later a supporter of the Communist-backed Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace for president in 1948. One has to wonder if the conservative-minded Players Association (which once unsuccessfully pressed an astonished, newly appointed Miller to engage Richard Nixon as general counsel and co-leader) would have chosen Miller as its leader if its members had been aware of this political history."
So that's how the Journal takes issue with Miller here. Not by taking issue with his actual record, but by going Joe McCarthy on him: he's a Communist. Case closed. We now know why he doesn't belong in the Hall: he was a Communist.
My point I'm trying to focus on is how they do it here-it works pretty well. No? Listen to a commentator, Jeffrey McEarlen:
How ironic it is to learn that an unrepentant Communist had so much influence in "America's pastime." The flipside would be having Steve Forbes coach the Russian Hockey team.
Well that might have worked better than having John Dupont coach the American wrestling team!
http://www.biography.com/people/john-du-pont-21261947
http://nypost.com/2014/11/12/the-real-life-murder-tale-behind-channing-tatums-new-role/
So message received by the very impressionable and thoughtful, Jeffrey. This is the kind of guy it must be a pleasure to know.
You talk about Pavlov's Dog? I mean just ring the He was a Communist' bell and Mr. McEarlen commences foaming at the mouth.
Meanwhile, it's a lie. Miller was not a Communist or socialist.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-funny-thing-about-baseball-why.html
Miller and the players union had the one truly consistent pro capitalist position in baseball. The owners in all the big sports are the ones who want sociialism. For years they opposed free agency-which is a basic worker right of the capitalist system-to have labor mobility.
The owners wanted a salary cap, and when they fell on their face-in baseball; in the NFL they lacked a Marvin Miller and ended up with exactly that; even today NFL style 'free agency' is hardly free-and had to give up their precious salary cap they imposed a luxury tax and revenue sharing which in any case didn't lead to the 'small market' teams from spending more money on the players-thereby sort of falsifying the whole thesis that they wanted these things to achieve 'comeptitive balance.'
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/if-competitive-balance-matters-so-much.html
What this does then is give fans the worst of all worlds-the revenue redistribution doesn't lead to more spending by the alleged small market teams but takes away the incentive of the big market teams-like my NY Yankees-to spend more.
Again, if you believe that the WSJ is 'libertarian' this makes no sense. If you understand that this word is just a euphemism for reactionaries who want to bolster traditional authority it makes a lot of sense.
The goal of conservatives is not 'liberty'-even economic liberty as Miller's position promoted econoimc liberty at any term-while they slander him as a Communist. It's about traditional authority-the power of the owners over the players in this case.
What this episode shows is that their reactioary agenda is totally in line with socialism. The baseball owners are not capitalists but they are true conservatives.
The writer, Henry D. Fetter finishes off with this illogical idea:
"Miller’s unyielding defense of players accused of wrongdoing was criticized even by his admirers, as was his denial that steroid abuse was a problem and his opposition to the mandatory drug testing of players. He lambasted fans who complained that mediocre players were receiving inflated paychecks, saying that they were ignorant of the business realities of the sport. But Miller also understood that, as he told one team owner, “when it comes to collective bargaining, bankrupt is a dirty word.”
"Along with vastly increased player compensation, the sport’s annual revenues have grown from $50 million in 1966 to $9 billion. Nowadays millionaire players face off against billionaire owners, and it is the fan who finds that his interests lack a voice in the councils of the game. At the same time, baseball has ceded its claim to being the “national pastime” to football, which now far outstrips baseball in popularity. Mr. Burk does not consider whether the changes in baseball resulting from the rise of the Players Association may have contributed to that loss of status. No one can deny Miller’s revolutionary influence on the sport. Whether it was always “in the best interests of baseball” will be endlessly debated."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-marvin-miller-baseball-revolutionary-by-robert-f-burk-1428270574
Regarding bankruptcy, a basic pillar of labor law is that for an employer to cry poverty, they have to show their books.
This idea that baseball has become less popular than football is absurd. For the record, football players make pretty good money these days themselves-so it's not as if fans are attracted the leagues where the players have the lowest salaries. Otherwise, the NHL would be King, rather than a distant fourth among the Big 4.
The main reason that football as surpassed baseball is that the NFL handled tv contracts much ore skillfully and adeptly.
P.S. I did have high hopes for the piece. No question Miller belongs in the Hall but could the WSJ publish a piece saying so? I had my doubts which naturally were well placed. If the Journal had done so, they'd be on better ground to claim they care about 'liberty.'
P.S. I did have high hopes for the piece. No question Miller belongs in the Hall but could the WSJ publish a piece saying so? I had my doubts which naturally were well placed. If the Journal had done so, they'd be on better ground to claim they care about 'liberty.'
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