Trailblazing former MLBPA executive director Marvin Miller will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame posthumously on September 8. Photo: National Baseball Hall of Fame

August 21, 2021

In this, the second in our Hall of Fame series, former Montreal Expos ace and longtime MLBPA executive Steve Rogers pays tribute to trailblazing MLBPA executive director Marvin Miller. Miller will be inducted posthumously into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on September 8. He will be honoured alongside Canadian Larry Walker (Maple Ridge, B.C.), Derek Jeter and Ted Simmons.

Read the first article in our Hall of Fame series here: Larry Walker’s dad pays tribute to his son

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By Steve Rogers

Former Montreal Expos player rep

As the celebration of Marvin Miller being inducted into the Hall of Fame begins to rekindle the memories of his impact on me and the entire baseball world.

The world of baseball in 1973 was very rocky. It was also my first major league spring training and the players were “locked out” by the owners for the first three weeks of that spring, so we could not train on schedule.

It was truly the first time I became aware of the existence of Marvin Miller.

The following spring, in 1974, Marvin’s meeting with the Montreal Expos started my relationship with the man. At that time, it certainly was a one-way relationship, with Marvin having no idea who I was, but with me being introduced to the great teacher Marvin Miller was.

His spring training meeting was designed solely to educate every one of us on the value each of us had, individually in the process, but more importantly the value we all had collectively to drive the process. That I still have a mental image of him standing in the middle of the Expos players in centre field in Daytona Beach that spring, illustrates how impactful his presence and message was.

Marvin the mentor and teacher had a very large task in front of him. Players had always had the Reserve Clause controlling their careers, salary arbitration was a very new process which was extremely bitter to go through and the trail Curt Flood had blazed was fresh, but still unavailable as a right.

Each Spring, Marvin would make the meetings all about educating us on the successes all the above issues had created and what we could achieve collectively by building more successes on top of those going forward. None of us knew the true value of the reserve clause until Charlie Finley and the Oakland A’s defaulted on Catfish Hunter’s 1974 contract. The subsequent ruling awarded Catfish unrestricted free agency which resulted in a five-year guaranteed contract with the Yankees. All of the sudden, everything Marvin had been saying was defined by Hunter’s $3.35 Million, five-year, guaranteed, free agent contract.

Marvin had worked hard to have the players in a good spot when Andy Messersmith did not sign his 1975 contract which was renewed without his signature. His subsequent grievance, heard by arbitrator, Peter Seitz established the reserve clause was only good for the one year of the unsigned contract. Messersmith then signed a guaranteed, three-year contract, for $1,000,000, starting in 1976.

The Seitz decision also gave every player who did not sign his 1976 contract, free agent status for the 1977 season. Marvin and General Counsel, Dick Moss worked tirelessly in January and February of 1976 to make sure every player knew the only way the Seitz decision would survive would be if every player knew their duty was to be united and of one mind. They warned all of us that the owners would come after us with all they had.

Players were educated and unified going into the spring of 1976, so the fact that the owners locked us out of the training camps came as no surprise and it was not intimidating. Marvin and Dick Moss kept hearing in the negotiating sessions how much the owners’ negotiating group and the owners themselves discounted the players. As the Expos’ assistant Player Rep, I attended an Executive Board meeting during the lockout, that spring in Tampa and the solidarity was palpable.

Marvin announced he had secured an open forum meeting with players and the owners’ Player Relations Committee which was made up of six of the most influential club executives. Their committee was convinced they could control the players by simply talking to us. Their committee and their lead negotiator all sat at a raised table in an amphitheatre styled room which was full of about 100 of the most high-profile players from the 26 teams.

Marvin and Dick had a pre-meeting with many of the 100 simply to put everyone at ease with speaking their minds when the time came. As the full meeting began, all Marvin had to do was sit back and let it play itself out. By the end of the two-hour shouting session, with segments of true discussion mixed in, Marvin had allowed THE PLAYERS to educate the owners’ leaders. By taking a step back, Marvin demonstrated to the players what he had been teaching all along, the power in a negotiation comes solely through educated unity. Rest assured, that lesson was not lost on the owners’ Player Relations Committee and their lead negotiator.

Marvin was a teacher, mentor and an expert on collectively bargained pension plans, but time and time again his skills at the bargaining table were unmatched. He knew that solidarity on issues came through making sure all the players were educated on the issues and when he carried that solidarity to the bargaining table, he had leverage. That was never demonstrated more than during the 1981 strike, forced upon the players because of the owners’ position on Free Agency.

At the time the NFL had the “Rozelle Rule” which effectively made all free agent moves from one team to another simply a trade. If football had it and it stopped true free agent rights for their players, then the baseball owners wanted it. At about week No. 5 of the eight-plus week work stoppage, the owners started the media campaign stating that the problem was Marvin and his brainwashing control of the players. After a few days of hearing he was the problem, Marvin took us on the players’ negotiating committee aside and explained it was time for us to step up and lead the negotiations, because he was going to step back. We went into the negotiating room for the next session and Marvin announced he was turning the negotiations over to the players and walked out of the room.

Bob Boone, our National League player representative, assumed the point and the gloves came off. After a very few days of hearing exactly how we felt, the owners made a request to have Marvin resume the lead which he did in his own good time. Lessons were taught to all concerned. To the owners, the problem was not Marvin, it was the position the owners had taken and to the players it was solidarity at work. It was truly an honour to be in the bargaining room with Marvin and I was very grateful to have him ON OUR SIDE.

After his retirement, Marvin maintained close relationships with executive directors Don Fehr and Michael Weiner, as well as with many of us on the Players Association staff. It was a pleasure to have more than a few opportunities to spend time with Marvin over those years. In a final demonstration of his desire to teach and mentor, Marvin was his eloquent self for hours recording an oral history of his years with the Players Association.

So many of those recorded segments, when I had the opportunity to view them, took me back to the days when he taught all of us the power of being unified. In my mind’s eye I can see Marvin, Dick Moss and five or six of us on the negotiating committee shortly after sunrise walking to Marvin’s favourite midtown New York City restaurant, open 24 hours, The Brassiere, after an all-night negotiating session which had seen Marvin and American League president Lee McPhail go to a side room to hammer out the framework of the settlement agreement. The sun was bright and despite no sleep there was a bounce in everyone’s step. Marvin capped it all off when the waiter brought the menus open to the breakfast items.

Marvin ordered a double Jack Daniels on the rocks and a steak. Seems a celebration was in order and all took the cue.

Thank you, Marvin.

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Steve Rogers was the first major league ace in Canada. He made 38 starts for the 1974 Expos going 15-22 while pitching 253 2/3 innings and in 1977 was 17-16 in 40 starts covering 301 2/3 innings. Some fans may only recall Rogers coming on in relief -- when Jeff Reardon had a bad back -- in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series and gave up a home run to Rick Monday of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

What people don’t always remember as the Expos thundered down the stretch to win the second half is that in his final four starts, he was 4-0 beating Hall of Famer Steve Carlton of the Philadelphia Phillies twice in the NL Division Series, Jerry Reuss of the Dodgers in the NLCS and New York Mets’ Pat Zachry on the final Friday of the season. In those four starts, he had an ERA of 0.50 allowing only two runs in 35 2/3 innings walking five and striking out 21.

In 2020, right-hander Adam Wainwright and catcher Yadier Molina of the St. Louis Cardinals took over the lead for most starts as a battery. They took the record from Gary Carter and Rogers..

Rogers finished his career with a 158–152 record and a 3.17 ERA in 399 games, with 1,621 strikeouts in 2,837 2⁄3 innings. He pitched 129 complete games with 37 shutouts in 399 appearances. He made five all-star appearances, including the 1982 All-Star Game.

He pitched for the University of Tulsa and made the College World Series title game, losing 10–1 to Arizona State. Rogers graduated with a degree in petroleum engineering. He was a first-round pick by the Expos. Rogers averaged 14 wins per season between 1974 and 1985. He made nine Opening Day starts for the Expos, eight of them consecutively from 1976 to 1983. Three times he finished in the top five in Cy Young Award voting (1980, 1982–83), he twice led the NL in shutouts (1979, 1983) and he topped the NL in ERA in 1982.

For his efforts, he was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.

CBN HOF Series: Steve Rogers on Marvin Miller