In their latest Main Character Month installment, Bobby and Alex are joined by writer and organizer David Hill to discuss the monumental legacy of Marvin Miller, the first executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association and one of the most important figures in the history of sports and labor. Among other things, they talk about Miller’s path to baseball, his various experience at the Wartime Labor Board and the United Steelworkers, the legacy he left for the players union, how he was covered vs. how sports labor fights are covered now, and more.
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Transcript
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and be able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitch and kind of help out so he wasn’t tipping his pitches. So tipping pitches we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand what tipping pitches all about? That’s amazing. That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, bro, you missed the memo.
ALEX: What memo?
BOBBY: The memo that you were supposed to show up to the Marvin Miller podcast with a mustache.
ALEX: With a mustache. Fuck.
BOBBY: When are you gonna bring the mustache back?
ALEX: I always do this.
BOBBY: You—
ALEX: I always do this.
BOBBY: You played around with it for a little bit in the pandemic. People don’t know, but you did.
ALEX: I did. I think—
BOBBY: What’s going on?
ALEX: I think it would— did not get the reception among some folks close to me that I thought it might. But I backpedaled. I’m sorry, I’m a coward. I stood down.
BOBBY: You got to power through, though, because, at first—
ALEX: I know, because it’s like— there’s an awkward phase and I just—
BOBBY: It’s like a little wispy, you know? It’s like, not— like, not that inspiring.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Remember bearded Alex era? Like deep pandemic, when you came and visited me in LA? That was— that was legendary stuff.
ALEX: That was— those were dark times.
BOBBY: They were actually really dark times.
ALEX: Those were really dark times.
BOBBY: No, you missed the memo that you were supposed to show up rocking Marvin Miller’s classic look.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: The thing that he was so well-known for. You know, better known than anything that got him into the Baseball Hall of Fame, apparently.
ALEX: He was— he kind of had some fits rocking.
BOBBY: Yeah, he had that shit on.
ALEX: I don’t know you’ve seen on the pictures of [1:48]
BOBBY: Nah, he had that shit on.
ALEX: Yeah, he was— he was looking good.
BOBBY: You have to. When you’re the face of organized labor in the sporting world, you have to make sure that it’s a— it’s a distinctive and— and suave and important feeling persona that you’re putting off.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: You can’t just look like a schlub, you know? Like no mustache, hat, white T-shirt, for example.
ALEX: I’m gonna— I’ll do a social experiment and— and just dress like Marvin Miller for a week, and then report back and see how different I feel.
BOBBY: Like, see if people come up to you and they’re like, “Sir, sir.”
ALEX: Right?
BOBBY: “I need your opinion on, you know, whatever is going on in the world.”
ALEX: I’m gonna be— I’m gonna be that— that guy who, like, walks down the street and is like, “No one dresses like they should anymore.” You know, in like, a three-piece suit or whatever. And it’s like—
BOBBY: Or—
ALEX: —”Frankly, this is the degra— degradation of American society.”
BOBBY: You’re gonna be like the Menswear Guy but worse?
ALEX: Well, this is— this is just trad content is what it is, you know?
BOBBY: I think to promote trad— that— that’s— I’ve always said that about Tipping Pitches.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We’re like trad content. That’s not what it is.
ALEX: No, I’m— that’s— I wasn’t saying this podcast.
BOBBY: No, I know. Just saying. One of the hosts is doing trad content on TikTok, apparently. You see, you’re doing Trad content.
ALEX: Horrif— horrifying string of words.
BOBBY: You’re doing trad content on TikTok, and I’m doing Italian guy content on all platforms.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: This is how we grow the game. You know, this is how we go viral. This is how we make this a sustainable economic situation for us.
ALEX: Yeah, well, you’re on— you’re on Bluesky now, right?
BOBBY: I will never. I’m just not interest—
ALEX: See, that’s not true. That’s not true.
BOBBY: What are you talking about?
ALEX: That’s— you— we— we talked like a week ago, and you were like, “Here’s the thing is, like, what if I do have to join Bluesky?” And I was like, “Hang on, you can’t let the listeners down like this. You’ve made a social contract with them.”
BOBBY: Yeah. That’s true, but not a financial one. Social contracts can be broken.
ALEX: That’s true.
BOBBY: Yeah. I’m just trying to say—
ALEX: Oh, a— oh, a handshake agreement?
BOBBY: Show me in writing, you know? Show me the money.
ALEX: I had my fingers crossed.
BOBBY: Gotcha. That’s how Marvin Miller won the first CBA. He was like—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: He told all the owners he sung them sweet songs, you know? He’s [4:08]
ALEX: I was like— I was even crossing my toes.
BOBBY: No, I’m not going to— I’m not going to Bluesky. I’m sticking it out on X, the everything app, waiting for Mark Cuban to buy it. You know?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Something that was floated, like, for three hours a month ago, and it got stuck in my head, and I was like, “He probably will do it, right?”
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That’s how my brain works. And I’m committed to never making a TikTok account, and I feel so certified in that— in that choice. Now, if you need to make, like, a TikTok account for the pod, I understand.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: But, like, a— a personal TikTok account where I, like, turn my phone around and say things to the phone, that will never happen. Just so you know.
ALEX: I know, I know.
BOBBY: The irony is that you would be such a great TikTok content creator if you committed to it.
ALEX: I know, I dipped my toes in there for a little while.
BOBBY: I know, and they were good— good TikToks.
ALEX: But I just— I couldn’t— I couldn’t hang. I thought they were good toes, but, yeah, TikToks are good, too.
BOBBY: I’m not going to comment on your toes publicly. The Slack will go wild. This is a weird start to the episode about Martin Miller in—
ALEX: Ah, it is, yeah.
BOBBY: —the main character month. As— as listeners at home know, we’ve spent the last couple of weeks talking about main characters of the show for its seven-year run. Just people that we’ve ended up focusing on a lot, that we’re intrigued by, that we’re interested in, that we feel are not fully understood in the baseball conversation, at least not in the way that our particular— particularly diseased brains understand them. So we started— we kicked it off by teaching people Alex Rodriguez’s rules to life, all the rules and how to succeed in life and business, that Alex Rodriguez has posited into the universe in the last three decades that he’s been a part of the baseball consciousness. Last week, we talked about Robert Dean Manfred, Jr., from Rome, New York. The historic site of Woodstock ’99.
ALEX: Don’t you forget it.
BOBBY: You know what’s going on right now. Korn is touring with System of a Down. Do you want to go?
ALEX: Let’s do it. When are they coming to New York?
BOBBY: We could— we could— I doubt they are. We could— unless they’re going to Rome, you know? Make a drive up.
ALEX: Go to the old stomping grounds.
BOBBY: We could go to that show, and we could invite Rob Manfred to come with us, and we could make it a business expense.
ALEX: Do you think he’s ever listened to Korn?
BOBBY: Unfortunately, he probably has come across to Korn. I mean, he has a radio [6:41]
ALEX: Oh, they’re playing with Deftones, too. All right, I’m in. I’m down.
BOBBY: I didn’t know about that part. My sister informed me of this yesterday when we were driving down to Atlantic City to see a little band called The Front Bottoms. Alex, let me tell you, there was a lot of modern baseball shirts in the crowd. It might shock you to learn.
ALEX: Hey— hey, they’re playing at a— they’re playing at MetLife next August.
BOBBY: Are you for real?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Are you for real?
ALEX: You can’t—
BOBBY: I don’t think I want to see Korn. Can we leave before Korn comes on?
ALEX: Of course, we can. Yes.
BOBBY: Okay, so we’re good for—
ALEX: It’s a time honored tradition.
BOBBY: —Def— Deftones and System of a Down. I’m good with that plan.
ALEX: Yeah. Avenged sevenfold, we sticking around or no?
BOBBY: Avenged Sevenfold?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We can stick around for that one song that they have. What’s the— it’s called, like— fuck.
ALEX: Nightmare.
BOBBY: No. Something about, like a— like a bat or something.
ALEX: Something about a bat or something.
BOBBY: Oh, Bat Country. I was right.
ALEX: Oh, all right.
BOBBY: Told you.
ALEX: Okay. So we’ll stick around for back— for Bat Country and then we’ll dip.
BOBBY: Right. Unclear when or if they will play that one song that I know—
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: —by Avenged Sevenfold. Are you a big Avenged Sevenfold head?
ALEX: Not really. I had— I had like a— like a moment, you know? In—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —I think, like, middle school or something like that, where I was like, “Wow, this is— this stuff is deep, man. They’re not just thinking about, like, the normal stuff on the radio, you know? They’re talking about, like, fucking nightmares and skeletons and shit. I was like, “Oh, my God.”
BOBBY: It’s to the point where I honestly don’t know how more people are not obsessed with 11-year-old Alex, like just crushing Avenged Sevenfold. I’m not gonna let it slide that you pronounced it Avenged Sevenfold.
ALEX: I don’t know— I don’t know why I did that.
BOBBY: You could be right.
ALEX: Or why—
BOBBY: I don’t know.
ALEX: I kind of thought you might let it slide, but it’s okay.
BOBBY: I never met the people. No, no, no, no. They wouldn’t be doing my job. People at home are saying to themselves, “Did he say Avenged?” They were— they were rewinding, and now they’re— it’s a payoff. That’s why they listen to the podcast.
ALEX: Well, it’s mostly just because I— I am used to referring to them as A7X, right? Their abbreviation. Like, I usually don’t say the full name.
BOBBY: Right. When you were posting their pirated files onto Limewire, that’s [8:57]
ALEX: Right, right. Right, when I was running fan— fan pages.
BOBBY: The people don’t know the histories of you and your fan pages, but we’ll talk about that on the Patreon feed.
ALEX: We will. Probably not this episode, though, because this is the Marvin Miller episode.
BOBBY: Bringing us back. Bringing us back. Yes. We talked about Rob Manfred last week. We talked about his chronology, his timeline, how he got into baseball, what he was doing before, how that set him up to become the right hand man of one Bud Selig. How that set up his tenure to become the commissioner, how he was the fixer turned commissioner, which you would never expect. It was really a good conversation. I— I quite enjoyed it. I do like to talk about Rob Manfred. I didn’t think I would be approaching my 30s and still sharing opinions about Rob Manfred for the Internet to listen to, but it seems like people like them. So here we are. This is the world that we’ve created for ourselves. And speaking of that world, Marvin Miller is one of the most important people in the world of Tipping Pitches. Marvin Miller, of course, the first executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, as they truly became a union, and not just a players association that was within the— the bounds and influence of the owners, but something that was truly independent and a real union. And they fought for their first collective bargaining agreement under Marvin Miller. They went on their first strike while Marvin Miller was the executive director of the Players Association, although he recommended that they didn’t. We’re going to talk about that a little bit. We let people know last week that this episode was going to be about— about Miller and about kind of like his legacy, but really, I was interested in talking about how he came to be such a compelling candidate for the Players Association, why they wanted to make him executive director. And part of that, a large, large part of that was his experience in industrial unions with the steelworkers. And then, prior to that, in kind of negotiating deals during the wartime Labor Board in various different industries, as the government had set up a situation— the government had set up a department where they were helping to mediate labor disputes during World War Two, because they didn’t want, for example, the steelworkers going on strike while they needed to build tanks or bombs or whatever. And he had worked— had served on that board. And so he’s just like, this really interesting guy, this really— has— with this really interesting life that led him to this point. And— and some of this— a lot of this, actually, comes from his autobiography, A Whole Different Ball Game, which I was pulling from a little bit for the background. But we had a— later in this episode, you’re going to hear a conversation with my pal, David Hill, who is a former organizer, a freelance writer, written a lot about labor, and has a lot of experience in these worlds, talking about Miller’s role not only with— with the baseball industry and the sports and entertainment industry at large, but really kind of, like, his bona fides, like where he developed them, the— the labor context that Marvin Miller was coming into in the 1960s as he stepped up from chief economist of the steelworkers to become the leader— the executive director of the MLBPA. Why— why did you want to talk about Marvin Miller? Aside from the obvious, I guess? What still—
ALEX: Yeah, I mean—
BOBBY: —compels you about doing a dedicated episode about him?
ALEX: I— I mean, his story really is foundational to everything we talk about on— on this podcast, but it goes beyond that, too, right? I mean, he is— the work that he has had, has had ripple effects throughout the world of broader organized labor. And frankly, he is kind of singlehandedly, the person who turns sports business into what it is today, right? A— a— this sort of thriving— and— and again, we’ll talk about this with Dave, right? But— but sort of the reforms that he pushes for, in part, fairy baseball into the kind of modern era. And there are, obviously, outside forces that— that are interplaying with this and rising TV revenues and that’s—
BOBBY: Outside forces? Like the drones? Over New Jersey?
ALEX: Stop. No. No. We’re not doing this mass hysteria bullshit. But I just— I— he is such an interesting character, especially with how he kind of approaches organizing this group of players, because he does it in large part by just sort of treating them with respect and, like, humanity and saying, “Hey, I see you for what you are, which is workers. And you may agree with me, you may not agree with me. It’s my role to basically just call it how I see it. And this is your union, so you can do with that information what you will.” And his approach is just really fascinating to me in how he kind of backs into a lot of these conversations. He finds an issue that— that unifies them, that appeals to them, however small, and uses that as an opportunity to educate them more broadly about their rights as— as laborers and the power of collective action. And so, I don’t know, we— we do a lot of sort of hand waving towards Marvin Miller and his legacy, but we have never really, sort of, you know, taken a deep dive into sort of what motivated him and— and what the context that he was organizing in looked like, because it’s very different, obviously, from the context of— of baseball and labor today.
BOBBY: It’s like hard to even wrap your arms around how different it really is.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like him coming from the steelworkers, this ginormous union with all of this power in comparison to any union that we might have now, because the steel industry was still massively successful. It was still— still bolstered by regulation that was happening at the federal government level, which is something that we’ve just completely abandoned as a society, of course. And, yeah, I mean, I think— you know, I gestured to this last week that— and I like the way that you said that we kind of wave our hands towards Marvin Miller without ever actually drilling down on any of the details. And I wonder, like— I wonder if some people listening, like, kind of have internalized some of that stuff, but maybe don’t even realize, like, how interesting of a life he lived and how interesting of a person he was. Profe— I mean, professionally, but also personally. Like, if you read his book that I would gesture to last week, A Whole Different Ball Game, which is an autobiography of his career, told through the lens of Major League Baseball, how he got there, and the— and the changes that he made. And I— I didn’t make it all the way through to the end before this, because we just finished our last book club. But I was just— even so struck about, like, he just has this very— and— and when you spend a lot of time in labor circles, like it’s cool to see that this is the type of person who succeeds in these kind of circles, because it’s so rarely true. Like, bullshit artists succeed everywhere else, but like, real honesty and transparency and a straightforward style of communicating is really rewarded in labor circle, and it’s so refreshing sometimes to real— to— to read something or to hear someone speaking, who’s just kind of, like, telling it like it is, in a real way. Not, like, telling it like it is to try to manipulate you. And I think that is what endeared him so much to not only the people who worked alongside him, like Donald Fehr and then became commissioner later on, and the professional class of people that he was working with, the economists, the people within the players union as they expanded their operation, but also the players themselves, you know? Like it’s— it’s kind of— it’s really hard to imagine, like, an economist rising to this rank and garnering this much respect with Major League Baseball players today.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: It’s hard to imagine another Marvin Miller coming along. It has to be a pretty special person to be able to do that. And he was a pretty special person. And I think Dave did a really cool job of explaining kind of some of these different factors that were at play in his professional career that developed his labor leading ideology as well. Anything else to add on him and— and just kind of, like, where he stands in the baseball world before we go to our conversation with Dave?
ALEX: Well, I mean, I— I’m actually— I’m glad you mentioned our— our book club that we had last week, right? We read Stealing Home by Eric Nusbaum and— I—
BOBBY: That one’s over on the Patreon feed, by the way.
ALEX: Which— which was over on the Patreon feed if you’re— you know, I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already. We had a really great discussion about the book, and we— and we talked to Eric about his— his process in writing it. But I find myself, actually, thinking about that book a lot while preparing for this episode, because that book deals— in large part, right? I mean, it’s about the— it’s— it’s about the— the construction of Dodger Stadium, but, like, it’s really not about that. It’s kind of about all the forces that— that lead up to it. And— and a big part of that is the myth-making around baseball, right?
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: That baseball is this, kind of, like— is on a higher pedestal than— than sort of other industries, other forms of— of labor, right? It is this national pastime. It has this storied history. It has this myth and ethos around it that makes it stand out from— from anything else. And this is a— a narrative that is largely pushed kind of from the top down, right? Because they recognize that the folks who are building this myth recognize that it’s— that’s actually good for business. And— and Miller’s work, frankly, is in large part unraveling a lot of that myth of baseball, not because he doesn’t love baseball, or doesn’t believe in— in its power or anything like that, but precisely because he does love baseball, right? And he grows up a— a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. His— you know, his father is a— is a salesperson and his mom is a teacher. And he really— you know, I mean, it feels like a— a bit of a trope to be like, “Oh, you know, he’s really drawing from these working class roots,” but like he does. He grows up going to Dodger games and— and seeing the players in person, on the field, putting their labor on the line, putting their, you know, their— their well-being out there for him, for the fan. And—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —and I think it does inform a lot of how he approaches organizing the players when he will eventually grow up. And I just— I— I found it to be really a sort of interesting subplot of his story, right? Is in— in— in organizing these players, much of what he’s having to do is roll back the last, essentially, 100 years of propaganda that has been written around this game and— and made the players believe that, you know, they are— they are not worth an organized labor movement.
BOBBY: Yeah. And what’s fascinating and what’s always been interesting to talk about baseball through the context of labor, for me on the show, is that what’s fascinating about the ownership propaganda that you’re alluding to is that they’re saying that baseball is sacred. Baseball can’t sully itself by stepping into the world of organized labor, which is— which is tough, which is tricky, which is morally complex, for a lot of different reasons. It’s interpersonally challenging when you have to fight with management. It’s awkward. It’s— at the time in the ’60s and the ’70s, as we know, it’s— it’s mafia-affiliated in a lot of ways. It’s violent throughout the history of organized labor in the United States, but also in the world. It’s associated with, quote-unquote, “extreme” political movements. It’s associated with communism. We talked a lot about anti-communism and how that’s the dom— predominant ideology of America, but also of the concept of baseball as it is developed in the myth. And so all of these things being employed to suit owners in— owners business interests, just don’t think about all of those things. Don’t think about— you don’t have to think about all of those things. You don’t have to put yourself through the challenge. You only have to think about baseball as the sacred thing that tells the story of America, and pavers over a lot of the problems itself because of its distinct beauty. And what Marvin Miller comes in and does— and maybe we go to our conversation with Dave after this, because Dave talks a lot about this really effectively. I thought— is he comes in and he says, like, “This is a job and with a job comes dignity.” You don’t have to think about yourself as selling yourself as being a worker when you’re a baseball player. Not just because you— you made it to the end of this very, very challenging road, and you’re this highly-skilled person, you do feel lucky, but that’s okay. You’re allowed to feel lucky, and you’re allowed to feel like a worker and feel dignified in that fact. And that really resonated with me, because honestly, the Players Association and other sports unions, the sports and entertainment industry, their unions of— of, like, smaller amount of people than the tens of thousands of people in industrial and trade unions with highly— highly skilled and highly specific labor, resembles a lot more of, like, Holly— the Hollywood writers, the Writers Guild of America, which I’m a member of. And so it’s why— it’s part of the reason why I’m so fascinated by all this stuff, and so fascinated by Miller, is because, like, he’s able to translate a lot of the principles of the industrial and trade unions and the fights that they’ve put themselves through. And he’s able to speak that language from there and place it in a place that, actually, economically is very different. But at the end of the day, what unites us is that we are all workers being exploited by capitalism. And so I mean, Dave says this much more eloquently than— than I do, and talks about it with a lot more experience than I have in terms of organizing different places in— in different contexts. But at the end of the day, like in the same way that you can tell the story of America through Stealing Home with the displacement, the public housing projects, the— the big business, the crooked politicians, all of these different things. You can also tell the story of America through Marvin Miller moving from the steelworkers to the baseball— Major League Baseball Players Association, and applying those principles, too. If you think hard enough about it. And that’s, I think, what we— we try to do with Dave.
ALEX: Yeah, definitely. You mentioned A Whole New Ball Game is his autobiography, memoir. It’s eminently the whole—
BOBBY: It’s actually A Whole Different Ball Game.
ALEX: A Whole Different Ball Game.
BOBBY: I keep calling it a whole new ball game.
ALEX: Okay. All right.
BOBBY: I do that, too. I don’t know why.
ALEX: A— right. A Whole New World. I’d— there’s some— I don’t know. There’s—
BOBBY: I think that actually might be it, honestly.
ALEX: Okay, I guess. No, but, I mean, we talk about, you know, his kind of— his moral clarity and— and his communication style, I think that extends to his reflections on his own work. And I don’t know, I would encourage folks to— to read his book. It’s really— it’s a really fascinating tale, and he is able to kind of really effectively create a compelling narrative that still feels really accessible. I’ll also just shout out that he also conducts an interview with— or is interviewed by Fay Vincent for Sabers oral history collection and— and I would encourage folks to check it out. It’s like three hours long. It’s a very sprawling discussion, but it’s a really fascinating insight into— into this man who built baseball’s labor movement.
BOBBY: Yeah. It’s like an unofficial— second unofficial— an unofficial second Tipping Pitches book club.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: A Whole Different Ball Game, to me, is kind of like as seminal, maybe not as wide-ranging, and doesn’t— doesn’t go as— as long as something like Lords of the Realm, but is as seminal and understanding like the history of what was going on—
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: —at the time and the different forces at work. It’s obviously told from only one person’s perspective, whereas Lords of the Realm is many different stories told from a third person perspective. But to me, it’s like— it’s a foundational text. All right, let’s do it. We’re gonna go to our conversation now with David Hill, talking about Marvin Miller’s legacy. But before we do, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[theme]
BOBBY: Okay. We are now joined by David Hill, freelance writer, a labor veteran, and a friend of mine, and a former co-worker of mine. How you doing, Dave? How’s it going?
DAVID: I’m doing just fine, Bobby. How are you?
BOBBY: Pretty— pretty good. You know, I think the— the gambling world has really blown up since we worked on the show Gamblers a couple years back now. A lot of conversation happening in that corner of the world.
DAVID: Including a feature piece by me in Rolling Stone this month that people should go pick up and read.
BOBBY: That’s exactly right. A wonderful feature piece of— like, a 10,000-long piece in Rolling Stone, which I saw some people talking about, and then I realized that you wrote it, and I was like, “Oh, shit. Now, I’m— now, I’m on board.” But we’re not here to talk about betting.
ALEX: I— and I— and I— I assume it was about how the gambling industry has matured in the last couple years since it— since its infancy, and really grown to become a reasonable, rational industry that we can— that we can rely on going forward.
BOBBY: Of course.
DAVID: Yeah, it’s— it’s got a little bit of everything, you know? I think some— somebody on Twitter called it The Canterbury Tales of the Sports Gambling Industry, so—
BOBBY: That’s— that’s good. I like that.
DAVID: It was a—
BOBBY: That’s a good moniker. It tries to look at the industry from, like, a bunch of different perspectives, so I spent a year hanging out with, like, professional gamblers, athletes, CEOs, you know, bookies. I went down to Costa Rica and hung out with offshore [26:42] so I did a lot of like— tried to look at it from a lot of different angles, and so you get a little bit everything in the story.
ALEX: Yeah. Well, we certainly need that.
BOBBY: Well, we’re not here to talk about gambling. We’re here to talk about labor, the other— the the twin interest of your heart, Dave, labor and gambling. We’re here to talk about—
DAVID: My heart is— my heart is big. It contains multitudes.
BOBBY: We’re here to talk about Marvin Miller, of course. The original executive director of the MLB Players Association. A guy who we’ve spent a lot of time talking about on the show, but I think— Alex, correct me if you— if you think I’m wrong, but our conversation has always been kind of limited to the particular foundation that he laid in the baseball world, like either from a collective bargaining agreement contract language perspective or just from a player hearts and minds perspective, radicalizing this group of conservative players that he was dealt at the beginning of his career in the MLBPA. But one thing about Marvin Miller is that he has this whole other, you know, book worthy career, even before he gets into the baseball world. And then, of course, after he leaves the baseball world, after he retires and passes the Players Association on the executive director role, he leaves a— a lasting legacy. And so Dave, I wanted to have you on here to talk about a little bit about that, just because you are someone who I think of as being well-versed in the entire history of all the different types of unions as an organizer yourself, and the different personalities that each of these unions had. And of course, Marvin Miller spent two decades with the steelworkers. And so I guess, to kind of start us off here, I’m wondering, like, if we can sort of time travel back to the 1960s and put ourselves in the mindset of someone who had spent 20 years working at the steelworkers, why— why would he want to leave that situation and take over the MLB Players Association? Kind of like what— what was going on in sports and labor at the time, that it would make it a compelling thing to try to try to push the labor movement forward for someone who’s so enmeshed within it?
DAVID: Well, he didn’t want to is kind of the answer to that. He didn’t want to lead the steelworkers. Miller had worked his way up to the top of the steelworkers. He originally was hired by them as a researcher, sort of a lowly researcher. He had an economics degree and— I think from NYU and he had worked for a number of different labor unions at that time. His first job was that he was a mediator for the War Labor Board during the war, right? He couldn’t fight in the war. He had some sort of birth defect that prohibit— kept him out of service. So he worked for the War Labor Board, and kind of mediated deals between management and various labor unions. And then he ended up working for the steelworkers, and worked his way all the way up to become kind of the top— you know, I mean, since when he was their chief economist, but he really was a negotiator. He did a lot of the negotiating with steelworkers. And at that time, the steelworkers were, I think, the largest union America, or they were one of the two largest unions in America. You know, steel was still a big industry in America. And what was interesting about Miller’s role there was that negotiating with these comp— you know, the companies all had an association. Like, you essentially were negotiating with the government, right? Like steel prices and all this— steel was purchased by the US government. You know, the government set a lot of these rates. It’s just sort of a different world back then and so he— he— he was really negotiating, coming up with negotiating strategies to deal with— to sort of leverage the government and the companies and the workers all against each other to make sure that the workers got their share— fair share. So he had quite a lot of power and influence in that union. But as happens— those of us who’ve been in the labor movement, worked in it, or, you know, held elected positions in the labor movement before know it’s a— these are dynamic, democratic organizations, so the President of the steelworkers, who was Miller’s mentor, lost, and a new president was coming in. And Marvin Miller started looking for a new job, because there was going to be a new— a new regime. And he actually was offered a teaching position at Harvard, which I think is what he really wanted to do. He wanted to teach at Harvard. That was, you know, a big deal for him to go and do that. And he— they— the players union, the MLB Players Association, I guess they really weren’t even a union, technically, at that point.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
DAVID: Looking for a new director. And they were— they had a committee that was putting a lot of candidates together to interview. Most of the people that they were interviewing were, like, lawyers and whatnot. I mean, the guy who had been their executive director— like their first executive director, was a lawyer who was like a management side lawyer, who had represented all the companies. So, like, they just sort of had a lot of—
BOBBY: Absolutely wild.
DAVID: Right They had all these bums that had run the organization that— that were sort of management side but— and they were— the list of people that they were talking to, there was like this judge, Judge Cannon, who was, like a well-known judge who was also very— the owners loved. You know, he was very close to the owners. So there were no union candidates on this list, and Miller was the one union candidate, and I can’t remember— there was somebody who, I think, had suggested him to the committee, some— some lawyer or some, you know, labor relations sort of person, who’d said, “This is a good guy. He’s looking for a job. You should talk to him.” And Miller was not interested in this job at all. You know, to him, it did not seem nearly as interesting as teaching at Harvard. And he— the story is that he went into the interview, you know, kind of wanting to tank it, like he didn’t want to do it. But he left the interview— when he left the interview, he said that he suddenly found himself wanting the job really bad. And the reason why he decided that he actually wanted it was that he kind of saw that the MLB Players Association was a bit in disarray, and that there was a lot of problems that— that the association needed to take on, and that they really had no ability to do any of it, right? And so what Marvin Miller had said, was, “All I could do at this job is improve it.” You know, like, there’s no way to fail because it was already so bad.
BOBBY: Right. The bar is so low to start.
ALEX: Yeah.
DAVID: Right? So he was like, “I can only make this place better, which would be great.” I think he thought that he could go in for a few years and then it would— it was an interesting proposition to him. Like he— he had said like, “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” is that— what I think he said. Like, it was— this was a— a rare opportunity to basically get to go build something up from scratch, to build something from the ground up that can actually be powerful. He saw the— he— that’s the other piece of it is that he saw the pieces there that they actually could win. That they’re actually— that they had a lot of leverage and they could be powerful if they did this right. And so I think that his wheels started turning, and he realized, like, all these kind of, like, corporate lawyers who they’re interviewing and all the people who run this association in the past have really failed to appreciate the real leverage and power that this association could have to win real gains. They— they— they’re not— you know, they don’t get what they have, and I do, and I think I’m singularly the person here in this mix that could take this association and make them powerful. So then he started really lobbying for it. And he didn’t get it. Like, they didn’t recommend him at first. The committee went with the— with Judge Cannon, who I then asked for too much money. So then they, you know, had to keep moving down the list. And the owners were really trying to take Marvin Miller, because, you know, the owners still were funding the association at that time and had some say in this. So they really did everything they could to try to sabotage him, but in the end, he managed to win.
ALEX: I— I think it’s hilarious that as soon as the— the, like, sort of labor expert actually enters the room, Marvin Miller enters room with the players, all of a sudden, the owners realize they’re violating Taft-Hartley. They’re like, “Oh, actually, we are not allowed to be funding this union anymore,” which is maybe the first sign that something is very deeply wrong, right? That the wool has kind of been pulled over your eyes for— for years. This ostensibly, you know, player centric organization that thus far has really the only gains they’ve achieved are— a sort of measly pension and some— and some healthcare benefits, right? But it’s a testament—
DAVID: Right.
ALEX: —to, like, how backwards that— that landscape was. But it’s also, as you mentioned, a very radically different from the steelworkers, in that it’s maybe 500 people, right, that he—
DAVID: Yeah.
ALEX: —that he’s organizing that are often really in disparate, you know, sort of far flung places. I mean, what— when— when he’s sort of entering that, coming from the steelworkers, you know, this really organized, huge— I think they had like, you know, 1.2 million members at that point or something like that. I mean, what is that sort of like, from— from your perspective, going from this highly organized, really powerful, frankly, really wealthy union that has done really well for their members to kind of come and say, “I’m starting from scratch here.”? Like— like, from your perspective, how do you think that— that he kind of approached that?
DAVID: Well, I experienced some of this myself in a much smaller and lower stakes situation where I actually was a organizer for the United Auto Workers, and I was organized— I was working with the UAW to organize auto workers in the south. And I went from there to working for the Writers Guild of America East, which was a very small union of very professional kind of— you know, it’s like crafting. I mean, it was a union that was a guild, essentially, that was a representative very highly skilled workers in the entertainment industry and really just sort—
BOBBY: A schmuck like me, right?
DAVID: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, at the time I went to work for them, folks like you didn’t belong to the union. It was actually a bunch of, like, screenwriters and TV writers who utilized the union as a way to defend their, like, very high, you know, labor standard and to kind of protect these highly paid jobs for themselves. Schmucks like you came in and really turned— you know, threw that union for a loop, and turned it into something different and much cooler, you know, than what it was at that time. But—
BOBBY: Yeah. We can say that conversation for the Patreon episode.
ALEX: Right.
DAVID: But I— you know, when I— it was an interesting change, because I think I saw some of the same types of things where— when I went into the guild, I realized, “Yeah, this is a small union. They don’t have near”— you know, the UAW had a billion dollars in the bank. You know, the Writers Guild maybe had, like $5 million in the bank. You know what I mean? Like, it was, like, there’s a very small number of staff that worked in office. There were, like, 5,000 members or something. But the— within the context of that industry, the Writers Guild held a lot of power and was— and a lot of leverage. And so this is sort of a different way of thinking about it. This is like industrial unionism as it exists in sort of manufacturing in the United States, requires you to have lots and lots of workers, is sort of unionized to key parts of the sort of— you know, whatever the— the supply chain, you know, the way that— the manufacturing process. And you sort of apply leverage by, you know, threatening to strike or whatever. But it was— the— the— the calculus is different when you’re talking about things like— these kind of craft unions. These, like, small guilds, where the workers are highly skilled and only certain people— you know, in theory, right? Only certain people can do this job. This is what the baseball players union had, right? It’s a small number of people who were the best in the world at what they did, and— and— and held a lot of bargaining power, even as individuals, but definitely collectively. And so I think that Miller maybe saw that— what the steelworkers had was powerful, you know, industrially speaking, but within this context of baseball, this small group of workers were even more powerful and could probably do a lot more. And in the end, did do a lot more. Over the course of his tenure, the— I mean, salaries were $19,000, the average salary when he took over the players union. And when he left, it was something— you know, the average salary was something like $600,000 or something, right? So this is, like, an amazing transformation of this work that happened through forming this union of this very small number of players.
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean, I think from— from someone who is like that smart, savvy, militant has been in these many circles, like to see an opportunity like that. You know, if you’re a true labor leader like Marvin Miller, turned out he was, like, you— it’s almost like you can’t turn that opportunity away. Like, this is an industry that needs this. This is an industry that is begging for someone to come in and— and apply their set of skills and his particular set of skills is— was so beneficial to baseball because he understood the economics of the game, having been in different industries and having negotiated during the wartime Labor Board. He had, I’m sure, been privy to all of this information about how different industries work, and he had an economics degree, and all these things that the Players Association was just never even considering. I mean, the pension was given to the Players Association as a way to stave off the Mexican league trying to attract players away because they were willing to pay higher salaries to bring stars down to Mexico around the turn of the 20th century. And MLB was like, “Okay. We’re kind of screwed if we lose all of our best players to this Mexican League, just because people are going to pay more money down there.” And so that was why—
DAVID: Yeah.
BOBBY: —they have had the pension to begin with. And— and that’s not— that’s not how you win a good pension, right? That’s— that’s Amazon offering $1.50 more so that you won’t sign the— the union card and start organizing their factories. Like, these are incremental wins that are almost sort of like a pittance to workers to prevent them. And so, I don’t know, I imagine for someone like Marvin Miller coming in there, that opportunity to, like, really make big strides and big wins and show that you can build something from the foundation up, it’s— it’s really compelling. It’s almost like compulsive for someone who really cares about the labor industry.
DAVID: Yeah. And it’s interesting, because I think what Marvin Miller is mostly remembered for is, you know, like I already mentioned, the dramatic increase in salaries, but also free agency and, you know, the— the elimination of the reserve rules in baseball. That’s what his legacy kind of is. But interestingly enough, the reason that the MLB Players Association wanted a new executive director and looked for somebody who could help them was because of the pension plan. And in the 1960’s defined benefit, pensions were a big— were— were really taking shape and becoming a big deal in American society.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
DAVID: And companies that had defined benefit pensions, you know, like the— these— like Major League Baseball, but really, a lot of industries in America, they were maintained by the employers and the workers who participated in these pensions sometimes were asked to make contributions. This all sounds like ridiculous to us today, because we don’t have pensions, and we all contribute our own money to 401Ks. But back then, like people were putting their own money into these pension plans. They had no idea what was happening with that money. They had no idea what was going on with it. They had no say in it, whatsoever. And it was unions, it was the labor movement that started to create these Taf-Hartley, which is a pension plan where the employer and the workers manage it together, right, where there’s sort of an equal number of people on the board that make all these decisions about the pension, and that the union has an important role in helping manage all that. That all kind of came out of labor movement. The pension plan in baseball was not the workers— the players had no say in it at all, and they were pretty sure they were getting ripped off. That’s why they were— that’s what— what— that was what sort of precipitated this whole thing about bringing Miller— Marvin Miller in, was his first thing that he worked on. And he was able to figure out that the— the com— the players— or the teams were stealing money out of the players pension plans, pension— pension plans. And he was able to negotiate a new pension plan where the employers would make all the contributions and the leverage he had on them wasn’t that they were threatening to strike. It wasn’t that the players were going to walk, or whatever. It was that he found that they were stealing the money and he used that as leverage. He said, “Look, I can either drop a dime on you guys for breaking the law and taking this money, or you can just—”
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: “—give us this— what we want, and give us a pension plan where you fund the pension plan and the players don’t fund it themselves.” And interestingly enough, they won that and then he got rid of their dues and took their pension contributions and gave that to the union. So the players also thought that they were making more money because they thought that they no longer had to pay dues to unions, so it was really brilliant. It was really brilliant.
BOBBY: This is someone who understands the political machinations that it takes to not only succeed when you’re negotiating, but also build something from the ground up and understand that, like, usually, if you turn over some stones, you’ll find the management is full of crooks, and that is usually pretty decent leverage. You know?
DAVID: Well, there’s this old saying in the labor movement. We used to say nobody organizes workers better than the boss, and what that saying means is that often we’d find ourselves— you know, we’re— we’d find ourselves in a, you know, organizing fight, or whatever kind of fight, and, like, the boss would end up doing something so outrageous or stupid, or— you know what I mean? Or— or evil, that it would bring workers to the union without the union even trying. Like, that’s what— you know, and that happened here, too. Where— where the, you know, the— he— you know, you mentioned before that he took over a union of, like, conservative workers, right? That the players were not that— they weren’t radical. They weren’t necessarily all that pro union.
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: And that’s true to a degree. I think really it was more so— it wasn’t so much they were conservative. It was that— players and really everyone in America, had really internalized this idea that baseball was a game, and that it wasn’t a business. In fact, the Supreme Court had also sort of reinforced that by saying that this is not interstate trade or whatever, that there’s— you know, that there were no—
BOBBY: Sport not trade was the, yeah, the phrase that they used.
DAVID: Yeah. Sport not tra— so, like, this whole idea that, like, this is all very silly. These are grown men playing a child’s game, that they’re very lucky that they’re getting anything at all. Everybody had internalized this idea, right? So that was what he was really up against, was— I wouldn’t call it conservative. That’s just sort of— was the way that people thought about sports, right? That there was not a good—
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: —a very sophisticated understanding of sports as business is what he was really up against. They didn’t go on strike ’till 1972. Like he— he did a lot in those first, whatever, 12 years without ever going on strike or even never threatening to go on strike. There was a lot of cooperation and, like, playing nice with management and— and whatnot. In 1972, when they go on strike, the— he actually, in ’72, recommended to the players not to go on strike. Miller tried to talk them out of it. And the players said, “Respectfully, we don’t care what you say. We want to go on strike,” because the— the— the— they were so offended at the teams and what the teams were essentially offering or not offering. You know, how— how— how hard the teams were playing. “We’re not going to give you one cent. You don’t deserve it. You know, you’ve gone too far already.” And the players sort of kicked into this, like, you know, competitive mode and they— they wanted to fight. And Miller couldn’t even talk him out of the fight. At some point, he realized, like, “The wind is all blowing at their backs and I’m just going to let it blow.” And they have this big strike in ’72 and they won, and they got everything that they wanted. But his inclination was, “We’re not ready to strike. We need to spend— you know, we— we’re not— we’re not at this place yet. He tried to talk them out of it.” So, you know, really it is that the owners did so much more to help build what, you know, the players union into an actual union, than Marvin Miller ever did. And I think that, you know, there’s this idea that he was some sort of radical that went in and— and radicalized these workers. But really, it was that he went in and made them think of themselves as workers and then the boss did all the rest.
ALEX: Yeah, I— he— he really is an organizer in, like, the truest sense of the word, right? Because he doesn’t come in and start agitating for strikes. He recognizes the landscape is a little fraught and— and to your point, it’s like the American people, generally, and then baseball players, specifically, have been propagandized for so long to think that, like, again, “It’s a— you’re playing a child’s game. You’re lucky to be here.” You know, the kind of dumb jock trope, right? And he really just comes in and kind of treats them with dignity and says, “I— I work for you.” And— and—
DAVID: Yeah.
ALEX: —and the— the 1972 strike is, I think, the perfect sort of example of that, of, like, his power, right? Of like, “I’m not coming in here to sort of intentionally, you know, lead a, quote-unquote, ‘revolution,’ so to speak. I’m just, you know, sort of showing you what you guys already have.” And I think he— he looks back on that. He is— when he reflects on these stories, you know, he thinks fondly of, like, moments like that, right? A grin creeps across his face, because that’s what you want. It’s an organizer, right? It’s like the— your— your class of laborers says, “No, respectfully, like we’re getting— we’re getting screwed over here and the—”
DAVID: Yeah, I think— I think—
BOBBY: No good organizer is the first person to say the word strike, right? You want— you want the—
ALEX: Right.
DAVID: I think—
BOBBY: You want th—e the union themselves, like the members, to democratically lead that. And if you have to drag them kicking and screaming towards it, it’s not going to be a fucking good strike, and I think he knew that.
ALEX: Yeah.
DAVID: What radicalized them, I think, was him making them understand or think of themselves as workers. I think that all these baseball players had this internal sense that they were probably getting screwed in one way or another, and that they might be worth more. But they were tamping that down, you know what I mean? And they were saying, “Oh, I’m— you know, whatever, I’m lucky. I’m lucky.” And it was him making them realize that, like, the— “You, you are getting ripped off. You are a worker that’s— they’re— they’re making profits off of your labor and nothing else,” right? That— that’s— it’s all— it’s like— at this point, the owner’s profits is 100%, like your labor because of how little they’re paying you. Another interesting thing that he did early on was this— you guys probably talked about this before, but like with baseball cards and stuff like that, where he also got them to think about how they— they had value— their likeness being licensed out to baseball cards and, you know— whatever. Different types of advertising was also worth a lot more, because they were getting screwed on that front, too. So across the board, getting these baseball players to realize their worth is what radicalized over that course of that 12 years, is why in ’72, they— they were willing to demand— willing to go on strike for their demands, because by that point, they really started to fully understand what they were worth. And it took that long of a process for them to get there. But it all started that— the initial sort of switch that had to get switched on was Marvin Miller coming in and saying, you know, “You’re a worker. You are— this is labor. You know, this is business. What we’re doing here is business and you’re the worker in this business.” And that sounds obvious to us today, but I think in 1960, it was not obvious. People did not think of sports that way at all.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: No. And he’s— he’s shocked when he comes in. He’s like, “These are simultaneously the most, like, exploited— some of the most exploited laborers I’ve ever seen.” And again, some of the most propagandas. You don’t even realize it, right? He’s shocked when no one brings up the reserve clause when he was going around and—
DAVID: I think—
ALEX: —meeting teams—
DAVID: I think he said that they were more exploited than the steelworkers that he worked for, right? And just— people should understand that when he says that, obviously, he doesn’t mean they make less money. You know, they make more money. They make a lot more money. But his idea of exploitation isn’t about how much money somebody’s being paid. It’s about how much someone’s— to what degree is someone being taken advantage of, right?
BOBBY: Yes.
DAVID: Like, to what degree is it— that’s what he meant, was, like, these— these baseball players are absolutely getting screwed in terms of how much money they’re generating for the people that since— that— that own these teams, their bosses versus the steelworkers, right? I think he saw the— the gap there. The degree there was much higher.
BOBBY: There’s such a— there’s a subtle difference in— in the way that, I think, the word exploitation or exploiting is used in labor circles, versus how it’s used kind of qualitatively in day-to-day life. Like, exploitation is not the same as suffering. Like, management will use the word exploitation all the time. We want to exploit your labor in order to make profits, because we are taking the risk on the capital side. This is how capitalism works. These are the dynamics that if you are the chief economist of the steelworkers, you understand. If you’re a baseball player who’s only ever played baseball and only ever cared about making it to the Majors, you never have cause to think about. And so that perfect mending of his experience, his ideology coming to an industry that needs it so bad, but also has so much to go there on the floor, and their ceiling is so much higher, whereas, like, the steelworkers, the ceiling is not as high, but they’ve already raised their floor, you know? They’ve already been organized for decades. I wonder, Dave, like, for— for you, from your perspective, like 1960 is like a really fascinating time in American labor, because I think during the ’40s and the war— and— and World War II, like, labor evolved a lot because of that war in the— in the time period coming out of it. They were— they had a no— that was kind of like the introduction and mass to no strike, no lockout clauses. And so for a long time, there was kind of like this mediated version of trade union negotiations, industrialized negotiations, because they just wouldn’t go on strike, because they would jeopardize the war effort, and management had agreed not to lock, you know, places like the steelworkers out for that time period, too, and Marvin Miller was working in that industry at that time. But then by 1960, that’s kind of changed a little bit. Unions have— have reverted back to going on strike to gain leverage with regularity or almost automatically, going on strike when a contract ends, so that they can exercise their leverage. But then also, we think about, like, sports weren’t really unionized yet in America. Like the major—
DAVID: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —sports, like the Baseball Players Association was the first one to really do it. And now, of course, we know that every major professional sports association has a union that is like in this model, even if— even if they haven’t gotten as far as this, like, the NFL Players Association, for an example. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, like, the ’60s, you know, like pre-Nixon and we still have, like, a lot of really tough, really bitter, but really, like, impassioned and— and popular, honestly, in the national consciousness, labor fights to come in the ’60s and ’70s, before Reagan comes in and kind of fucks over a lot of these efforts in the ’80s. But Marvin Miller was, like, right in the middle of that, so, I mean, what do you think about that time period?
DAVID: It’s an interesting time period. I mean, you know, the labor movement in America in the 1960s was really— the forefront of the American labor movement was workers that worked in manufacturing, right? So the large industrial unions and also the Teamsters Union were kind of the major unions in the American labor movement. And a lot of Americans worked in manufacturing at that time. And so a lot of, you know, unions touched a lot of Americans lives. I don’t— you know, we’ve never in America had— had a big, strong labor movement like other, you know, industrialized countries have. You know, we’ve always— it’s always been sort of a minority share of the workforce. It’s always been, you know, relatively weak. But the ’60s was a period of relative strength for the labor movement, and there was a lot of support from government, right? And that mattered, because a lot of the industries that were unionized were also heavily regulated, right? So the Teamsters Union, for example, you know, Jimmy Hoffa negotiated this Master Freight Agreement in the ’60s. This was a major watershed event for that union and for truck drivers and for the labor movement, you know, that came through getting the federal government through regulation to set— you know, by pressuring the government to set rates or whatever, and using that as leverage to get the employers all kind of in line behind a master agreement. So there was this, like— you know, there was sort of this tripartite agreements that happened between the federal government, the labor unions, and the industries that they were organizing. So the government, I think, helped a lot during that period of time, and, you know, that sort of goes on until the Nixon years, right, where it’s— things start to change under the Nixon administration, just not really dramatically. I mean, Nixon was not a super anti-union president. The Teamsters actually endorsed Nixon for completely different reasons, right? Because they were, you know, mobbed up or whatever. But, like, you know— but it was the beginning of what then takes place in the— during Carter’s administration, and then into the Reagan administration that you alluded to, where the federal government decides they’re completely out, not only on unions, but also on regulation of a lot of these industries which were then—
BOBBY: Right.
DAVID: —deregulated, right? Trucking, airlines, a lot of these industries got deregulated and that, actually, hurt some of those industrial unions’ power and going into the ’90s, where then we just offshored everything. So the fact that the American labor was rooted in industrial kind of manufacturing workers meant that that’s— that’s where that base was in the ’60s, and that’s what disappeared from— I mean, they could never figure out how to pivot, right? Sports and entertainment had been the exception to the rule where, you know, America— the— the one industry in America today that is, like, pretty well, you know, organized and unionized wall to wall are sports and entertainment, right? That’s where we’ve— where unions have been able to continue to hold real influence and sway and— and, by the way, create a product that is incredibly profitable for all of those businesses, right? Movies, television shows, and— and professional sports. So this was the beginning of that, too. Marvin Miller is really the tip of the spear. He is the very beginning of the idea of sports as business and, you know, athletes as workers. He’s— he begins a – a process that is continuing to this day with not just Minor League Baseball players today, they’re organizing, but college athletes and everything that we’re seeing happening among NCAA athletes. It all tracks all the way back to Marvin Miller telling those baseball players in 1960, that they’re workers and they should have a collective bargaining agreement. It all begins— and so it’s really a long— you know, he starts a long path here that— that’s still going on and has been very, you know, pretty consequential and— and— and— and not only that industry, but in sort of, you know, popular culture and, you know, the way that we think about sports all over the world.
ALEX: I’m wondering, sort of, as we, you know, continue this conversation, how the— the role of media sort of plays into his efforts, especially at that time, right? Because you have a— a sort of class of sports journalists who are not labor journalists, right? Who have covered this game for— for years—
BOBBY: To say the least.
ALEX: And are honestly, I think, a little bit peeved that— that there’s this kind of man who—
DAVID: Uh-hmm.
ALEX: —all of a sudden, is creating these headlines that they don’t really know how to cover. Can you just sort of talk a little bit about what that atmosphere was like, that he was sort of going up against, not only against management, but kind of in the media?
DAVID: Yeah. It frustrated Marvin Miller to know and that— that the journalists that were covering things like the 1972 strike, were sports writers and that like— you know, so essentially, like, you know, for people who don’t know how media works, right? Like a lot of newspapers would have many different desks and different editors and teams of reporters and journalists that worked in a particular— whatever. You know, like in a particular sphere of news and— and so sports was, you know— there were sports writers that covered sports. And when there was a strike in baseball in 1972, most newspapers in America assigned that story to their baseball writers.
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: And these baseball writers were in no way equipped to understand what the hell was being, you know, debate— I mean, a lot of the articles at the time just called it— you know, that’s— would— would reduce the strike in the fight over to a health or a benefits plan, right? Which made it sound like it was a single issue, simple thing, why can’t these rich players get over it and figure out a solution to the benefits plan? When, in reality, it was a fight over, you know, essentially, their entire, you know, livelihood. So he really was frustrated by that, and he tried to get papers to send labor journalist that he had worked with before in the, you know, in the steel— with the steelworkers to come and cover this from the labor point of view. And he said— and some journalists did, and those were the better stories, right? But this was a process and it was one that was naturally going to happen. And it sort of started with that strike, but it continued on all the way through the ’80s and on, into trying to get people to see labor— labor conflict and battles in sports not as a sports story. And there’s really no reason why any sports journalists would need to try to— you know, this is a— this is a labor story, this is an economic story and— and so that’s— you know, I don’t think that— yeah, look, we still deal with this today. You know, I pitched a story—
BOBBY: I agree.
DAVID: —to the— to the New York Times about the— you know, recently, the, you know, the Starbucks workers have been organizing all over the country and all of the major— all of the sports unions in America, all the Major League unions, all signed a letter that they wrote to the Starbucks CEO and every single union, baseball, football, soccer, all of them, they signed this letter supporting the Starbuck workers and asking for them to come to the table and [58:46] a deal. I thought this was a good story, so, you know, I pitched it to the New York Times. They couldn’t figure out what desk to sign it to. Is this— and they were, like, asking me like, “Is this a sports story? Is this a labor story?” And what’s interesting is that when I was thinking about it, I thought— you know, I think it should be a sports story, and the reason why I thought it should be a sports story was because I wanted readers of the sports page to be the ones to read that story. But that was me thinking as a organizer who’s on the side of labor and not necessarily as a journalist, right? But I thought like—
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: —you know, like these— this is the audience that needs to hear this, right? That at— that— that— that professional— you know, NFL players are standing out on the picket line with Starbucks workers. That’s something that I think sports fans need to be thinking about, right? And understanding that that’s— these— their heroes are also, you know, rank and file union members who see common cause with Starbucks [59:35] that wasn’t something I— but I can understand the dilemma that a— that an assigning editor might have with a story like that.
BOBBY: I mean, I think it’s really fascinating that you see just these problems that are kind of never ending in the way that labor gets talked about in the sports industry. Like, I think back to the— the most— the coverage of the most recent lockout, and we’re still seeing the same things that we were seeing in 1994. We’re still seeing the same talking points that we’re seeing in 1972 with the players strike. Because I think that, honestly, if I had to diagnose it, it’s that these baseball writers, like what made their baseball writing so essential and so beloved was that they are, like, slipstreaming into the myth of baseball. And the myth of baseball is the thing that Marvin Miller is trying to undercut to get people to realize that you don’t need to be giving up your leverage just because you get to participate in this thing that has had so much myth-making put into it for the last 75 years. And so it kind of like— it calls into contrast, it calls into question, honestly, what is the underlying thesis of every— of the way that we’ve been covering this game for the last 70 years? Should we have been thinking more about the exploitation that’s been going on in this industry? Should we have been thinking more about the people who originally tried to challenge the reserve clause and the Supreme Court getting involved and siding on behalf of the owners who, at the time, are not billionaires, but are the equivalent of— of our modern day billionaires? But even now, like I saw very little labor coverage that effectively explained, like, what a lockout is and why it happens, and how there are only a certain number of levers that either union or management can pull on to advanced negotiations. We all hear about how there’s a stalemate, stalemate, stalemate, they’re not even talking, they’re not even talking, and then fans just get really mad. You know, they don’t really understand why you wouldn’t come to the table and start negotiating and give up your leverage before you have to. These are just things that like, if you don’t have personal experience with it, and yet, 50 years later, like we’re still not really seeing it covered that way. And I— I wonder why that is, except for the fact that I just think about how media unions have just been decimated, and how a lot of this coverage is not being coverage is not being done by people who have personal experience with this.
DAVID: Well, I would say two things. One, I think that, you know, media unions are being decimated by media being decimated right now, but— but the idea—
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: —of media unions is greater today than it ever has been, right? That there actually has been a lot that’s happened within digital media for them to get unionized. And you know, people like yourself really did a lot of— you know, showed a lot of courage to unionize a lot of digital media shops over the last, whatever, you know, 10 years. But I think that’s important, because the— the reason that I think people struggle to understand the sort of— the nuance, or even report on it, or sort of understanding when they’re reading about it, is because Americans don’t have a lot of experiences with unions. I mean, unions are at their lowest point today than they ever have been. I mean, this is, like, less than— you know, something like 6% of the private sector. I mean, it’s essentially nothing, right? Like, the unions are—
BOBBY: Hmm.
DAVID: —are— have really been defeated and— and— and so that means that people— even— even though we live in a period of time when more people than ever, say they support unions, right? We have, like, 70% of American populations saying that they support unions. They’d like to— they would even like to have a union where they work, but fewer people than ever have them, so this is sort of a weird moment that we live in. But where we see this play out in— with sports and athletes unions, is that, yes, people don’t understand what a lockout is. Yeah, they don’t understand what the— what— what’s— what’s— what the sort of, you know, in— the machinations are, that are going into these disputes. Sports fans, especially who understand a lot about sports, but don’t understand a lot about the business sport. But people understand more about the business of sports than they ever did before.
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
DAVID: And people have these sort of parasocial relationships with athletes. And I think, from my point of view, today, I think there’s a lot more sympathy for athletes on the business side of things than ever before. This idea that they’re all rich, overpaid, whiny, you know, complaining like spoiled brats, that feels today like an anachronistic attitude. Like, when you hear somebody or see somebody complaining about an athlete being like— whining about their money being like, you know, spoiled or whatever, you immediately assume that’s like a boomer or something. That that’s some like—
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah.
DAVID: —old guy, you know, like— like, it feels like an anachronistic attitude to have. Today, people seem to really support athletes in this fight and understand that they’re being underpaid and undervalued by these teams a lot of times. And that even extends to collegiate athletes, where— you know, we used to do this workshop back when I was at the UAW. We do these workshops with members, where we would try to get members together to, like, to debate controversial issues that weren’t like union issues, to get them to think about how to have hard conversations. And one—
BOBBY: Hmm.
DAVID: —of the things that we would do in this workshop is we’d have them debate whether or not college athletes should be paid. And this is way before— you know, this is like, in—
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: —, you know, 2009 and ’10. And in the beginning, that was a very— people would fight until they’re— you know, they had strong opinions on both sides of this argument. They would fight each other about it. And then a couple years later, we noticed that, like, nobody was fighting about it. In fact, everybody was taking the same position and it wasn’t controversial anymore. And now, it’s like today, it’s the— so I kind of think that, you know what— the way we thought about professional athletes and thinking about them has now trickled down even to collegiate athletes. And this would not have been possible, you know, 50 years ago. So we are sort of seeing progress in thinking about athletes as workers and thinking about professional sports, and even amateur sports as business where people are being exploited. I think the average fan has come a long way on how they think about that. But I— you’re right. The employers definitely trot out the same arguments time and time again. I just think they’re finding less and less purchase as years go on.
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: And I think that athletes unions should take advantage of that, if they, at all, are inclined to.
BOBBY: I think— I mean, I think it’s in large part because of the idea that you were talking about earlier, which is that the bosses organize the— the workers as much as anyone. The bosses organize the fans as much as anyone, too. Like, we’ve seen—
DAVID: Absolutely.
BOBBY: the— the— the change in the ownership class, honestly, has made fans much more radical against owners than ever. It’s like— it’s no longer Bill Veeck trying to own a baseball team, or even, you know, more controversial owners like Charlie Finley trying to own a baseball team, whereas, like, this is their business, right? Like— so even if they’re fucking it up, like they’re fucking up their own business. If— now, it’s like if you’re fucking up baseball, you’re fucking up like your fourth business, you know? It’s like— it doesn’t even matter.
DAVID: Yeah.
BOBBY: We have the Forbes billionaires list. We know that this is not how you made your money. You inherited it from fucking Chick-fil-A or Walmart or whatever. So, like, we know that we actually
have more information about where to place our priorities and where to place our affiliations, I think, which is helpful in terms of the— the attitude. But, again, like, is it— has it done much? I don’t actually know. Like, are union— are sports unions stronger now than they were in the heyday of Marvin Miller? Do they have a better attitude towards the industry or has that— have the edges kind of been sanded down? I don’t know. We could probably debate that for a long time.
DAVID: They probably do just— if you look at how much they’re able to really dip their hand into these— the deals that make the billions of dollars for these leagues.
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: Then I would say they probably do have more power, but they probably don’t have as much power as the union did at a time when, like, the players really identified with the union, right? So one of the things that was kind of cool about the players union under Miller, was that— and this is really a product of it all being very new, right? Was that the players during that time felt such tremendous like— you know, they— they really identified with the union as their union. They saw Marvin Miller as their leader. They wanted to protect him and fight for him and fight for each other. And that, I think, went away over the years. And this is something that I think happens in all industries, and you’ve probably experienced this yourself, as an organizer, I would find all the time that workers who organize their union, who bring a union into a non-union shop and really have to walk through that fire to bring a union shop, end up really not taking it for granted and thinking it’s very important, you know? And— and being more involved and also like, you know, really not— like I said, not taking for granted, but workers who go to work at a job that’s already union, where the union’s been there for 40 years or whatever, they sometimes will be— they— they will take it for granted, or they’ll even be overly critical of the union and really not, you know—
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
DAVID: —make any excuses for it, because, to them, they didn’t have to sacrifice anything to get it. Everything that those workers fought for, they got it just by getting hired at the job, you know? And so I think there’s a little bit of that among athletes today, where athletes today probably don’t appreciate what athletes before them really had to go through in order to get the— even the ability to dip their hand into those deals and that’s what I think might be suffering. And we saw that in the NBA, where there was a real divide between superstar players and the players union, you know, during the— so, you know, we see a little bit of that in certain sports and I think that’s the real shame of it, is that we— that hasn’t really continued.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, there’s a really sort of the— you know, in 19— you mentioned the 1972 strike, when the— when the players basically vote against him and— and it’s this really striking moment when the players sort of have, you know, said, “Yes, this is our union. We’re gonna do”— and— and— and the other kind of moment that really stands out to me in that period is— is with Curt Flood, right? Who, again, is— wants to go to the supreme court and challenge the— the antitrust exemption. And— and Miller advises him not to do it, not because he doesn’t think it’s a worthy cause or anything like that, but— but because he says, “Look, like this is going to destroy your career. It’s a million to one chance.” They have already ruled multiple times that, you know, baseball is exempt from these anti-trust laws like— and— and Flood basically looks at him and says, “But is it like— is it going to help my teammates? Is it going to help the— the players who come after me?” And Miller says, “Yes.” And Flood says, “Okay. Then I’m gonna do it.” And it’s this really striking sort of political moment that obviously speaks to Flood’s kind of nature and resolve as a— as a person. But also the solidarity that had been fostered there, right? That I think Miller did so well to cultivate where these guys really did feel like they were fighting on behalf of— of each other and not just for themselves. And I do think that’s something that you— as you pointed out, like it’s— it’s a little harder to see that sometimes in— in labor dynamics today.
DAVID: Yeah, another axiom we used to have when I was an organizer was that you can’t want it more than the workers do, right? And you can’t be like— you know, you can’t— if you find yourself really trying to, like, push somebody to do something hard to the degree that, like, they— you know that you’re— you know, that it seems more important to you than them, then it’s probably a bad move. And I think that what was cool about Marvin Miller was, you know, he really just sort of made it plain for folks and— and laid it all out there and said, you know, “This is why what we’re doing today is going to be better for the— you know, for you. But this is why— what you’re— but— but then you really have to invest yourself in making sure it’s gonna be better for the people after you, because the guys that came before you didn’t do it for you, you know? And that’s also part of why you have this lot. And that worked. And there was a generation these ball players who really tried to fight for the guys coming behind them, but that has a law of diminishing returns, because, like I said before, you end up with a generation who didn’t ever— you know, didn’t have to fight, and did end up getting a pretty good deal from— on day one and it becomes harder to get them to understand that, like, you know, this was a product of a fight. Now, you didn’t have to have that fight, but at some point you might have to, and it might be a fight that you’re having for a future generation. It’s just a hard thing to convince American workers to do, and unions have— all— in all industries have struggled with that to get American workers to think not about what’s in your paycheck this week, but what’s going to be in somebody’s paycheck, you know, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, whatever. That’s— and that’s why we have two-tier systems, and that’s why we have a lot of industries where unions have really decertified, because it’s hard to get American workers to think about the people that come after them.
BOBBY: It turns out that rugged individualism was a very compelling argument for people in a country where it was founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, reportedly. But, like, I— I want to end on talking a little bit about— you wrote the memoriam, the obituary for Marvin Miller in Grantland in 2012, I believe, was when Marvin Miller passed. And you talked a lot about this idea of tension, that Marvin Miller created tension in an industry that needed it. Like, there were problems, and in order to solve problems, it’s what you’re talking about, Dave, you have to have difficult conversations. You have to be willing to walk through the fire. You have to be willing to sacrifice for the person next to you and put yourself in opposition to management, because that is the dynamic that capitalism demands. It’s labor versus management at the table. It’s a zero-sum game. Like if it doesn’t go to you, it goes to them. It’s not going to some charitable export or something like that. And I thought it reminded me a lot of when Marvin Miller got inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2020, because this was something that I think a lot of people were really tor— the idea of him getting into the Hall of Fame was, like, a really torturing idea, because, like, they wouldn’t want him in there. The owners wouldn’t want him in there. The people that established the Hall of Fame wouldn’t want him in there. And yet, if baseball— the Baseball Hall of Fame is going to capture any reasonable, you know, picture of what the history of baseball is, not putting Marvin Miller in there is an absolute farce. And at the— at his induction ceremony in 2020, the person who spoke about him was Donald Fehr, who he had hired as general counsel in 1978, I believe, and then took over as executive director— as a second executive director after Miller. And— and Fehr gave a really kind of long and rambling speech about Miller’s impact. And this was also the same day that Derek Jeter was being inducted, too. And so people were kind of antsy and, like, at— at points, you could even kind of hear the crowd groaning and maybe even, like, booing a little bit at Fehr talking about Miller and I just— that image to me came to my mind when I was rereading your obituary about Miller and thinking about tension, and how, like, to me, his legacy is, like, introducing the idea of tension and confrontation in circumstances where, like, you really need it. You really should have it. And the labor world is built on that, right? Like it’s about tension and fighting for what you believe in and— and feel you deserve a need. And I don’t know. I mean, I think I do still see that, like around the Players Association. I do still see the concept of— of tension and being willing to go to the table, and the executive subcommittee this past time around, knowing that they were really well-taken care of, but still recommending no to the deal, and the rank and file saying yes to it. And so, I— I mean, I wonder how you think about him— him now. It’s 12 years since you wrote that. It’s obviously the— the world and how we organize. The financials of sports have changed a lot, moved away from cable to streaming and licensing and gambling, and all these different things. And so how do you kind of square his legacy 12 years removed from you having to think about it at that time?
DAVID: Well, I think all the things I was just saying about, you know, players unions today, and the way that they— the way that I think players maybe don’t completely take— you know, they take a lot for granted, union speaks a little bit to this, right? I mean, what Marvin Miller was up against and why he talked about tension, was that the players, at the time knew that they wanted all these things, but they were say— they were afraid, like, if we really turn our association into a union and try to collectively bargain, isn’t it going to create all this tension with these teams where we actually, you know, don’t— we have kind of a decent relationship with our team or whatever. This is my job, and I don’t necessarily want there to always be this tension between me and my boss. And this is something that I, as an organizer, experience all the time, right? Where workers would say like, “Yeah, I want all these things and I want a union, but I don’t want things to be weird all the time at work and have my boss mad at me all the time, and had this tension that exists.” And I think what Marvin Miller said then and what was— is absolutely true, is he’d say to the players, “The tension’s already there.” Right? I think that people are mis— what people misunderstand is the difference between tension and confrontation. What people really feared was confrontation. Like the tension was already there, because that’s why they called him in. That’s why they felt the need to do this. Because there was a— there was an imbalance in power and there was a group of people that were feeling like they were getting fucked over. That’s the tension, right? The tension exists. They’re carrying it. The workers are carrying it. The baseball players are carrying it all on their own. The owners feel no tension. They’re getting everything they want, but you’re already feeling all this tension. What we need is confrontation, where we push back and make the owners feel a little bit of tension. You know what I mean? It’s only fair that we— you know, that they should feel some of this too, and we figure this out. If we sort this out, you know, then people will feel better in the end. But the— the tension never goes away. There’s always a tension between the boss and the workers. What we want to do is create— we want to eliminate this discomfort, this imbalance, this, like— you know, we— and we’re going to need confrontation to do that. People don’t like confrontation. Marvin Miller didn’t like confrontation, right? He says that the best thing was for everybody to get along for their, you know— but everybody’s only going to get along if everybody feels like they’re being treated fairly. And if the workers feel like they’re being treated fairly, they’re going to get along fine with the bosses, right? And the bosses will get behind with the workers. Like, he wanted to reach equilibrium, right? A sense of, you know, where— where everybody felt good about the arrangement. I think he succeeded in doing that to some degree, although the fact that he didn’t get into the Hall of Fame until 2020, speaks to how much he didn’t succeed with his contemporaries, who blocked him from the Hall of Fame for his entire life, and then, well, you know, years into his death, because they didn’t, you know, ever— you know, they never felt good about having to give a little bit to the workers. But, you know, I think that— that was what his goal was, was to eliminate some of that— to minimize the tension and eliminate confrontation, but you can’t wish it away. You only get rid of it by having the confrontation, right? And I think people don’t like—
BOBBY: As a release— release valve, yeah.
DAVID: Yeah. You have to— you have to have the fight. And, you know, you’re only gonna have to have one— we used to say all the time, like everybody was like, “Well, we just need to have one fight. And if we win, you know what I mean? If we win this fight, we’ll never have to fight— have another fight again, because we will demonstrate what the fight looks like, and then nobody will ever want to go through that again.” That’s what that 1972 strike was, you know, for baseball players. They— they were like, “We’re going to have this fight. We’re going to cost these teams a lot of money, and then they’re never going to want to do that again. And they’re going to realize that they don’t have to, because they’re still going to make money into the ’80s with this, a deal that they’re going to sign with us.” He was right about that, and I think that’s the thing that unions need to start to understand more, and workers need to realize is that, you know, sometimes you have to have a fight but you only got to do it once, and then everybody— that’s how— you know, it’s like that old thing about when you go to jail, you gotta pick the biggest guy in jail and pick a fight with him to sort of tell everybody— show everybody that you don’t— aren’t messing around.
BOBBY: Yeah.
DAVID: You gotta do that, right? You gotta stand up for yourself. If you do it once, you’re not gonna get bullied anymore. And I think that’s the situation American workers find themselves in, even today, is that they’re not standing up for themselves because they fear that confrontation, but by not having it, they end up getting fucked over and they carry this tension with them all the time.
ALEX: I think Miller would— would often say, “I will— I will never celebrate a strike, but I will always celebrate the results of a strike.” Right? And I think that’s like— that’s kind of it right there, right? It’s like no one— no one is necessarily agitating for this, especially among ball players who have never gone through any of this before, right? But when you see the power of it, you will recognize why it’s a tool in our tool belt and— and, I don’t know, I think he was right about that.
DAVID: Yeah. He was— he was a capitalist.
ALEX: Right.
DAVID: He was a capitalist and he was unapologetic a capitalist. And, you know, he’s thought of today as being this militant radical, but that’s really all just context. His ideas were radical at the time, they’re not anymore. You know what I mean? And he—
ALEX: Hmm.
DAVID: And all he wanted all along was to sort of, you know, build an organization that would bring some real, you know, dignity and— and— and— and give these workers the power that they deserved. I mean, you know, like I said, in context, it all feels very weird to us today because the way we think about sports, but at the time, it was radical. So that’s sort of— he’s known as a radical, because he was doing something very hard and very different, but his intentions were purely— you know, as somebody who was a— a sports fan, a capitalist, and— and— and somebody who even had a little bit of sympathy for the owners, you know? So he— I think he managed all that with aplomb, and he was able to find some balance, and the players union succeeded, you know, well beyond what he could have imagined because of— because of how adept he was at balancing all of that throughout his tenure.
BOBBY: And I think a certain understanding— even if it’s not sympathy necessarily, but like an understanding with the perspective of ownership is— is important as a labor leader. Like you have to understand how they think in order to understand how you play off of that as— as— as the labor side and as the union side. And he— again, he’s like— he’s an economist. He understands— he is— starts his career. We go all the way back to his career—
DAVID: Right.
BOBBY: —negotiating deals for the wartime labor board, you know? Like, this is where you have to understand both perspectives and try to come to a solution that is amenable to the politicians in the bureaucrats who are at the head of this organization, not just for the labor side. I mean, I think we would like to say, like, guess, we three on this podcast, maybe our political views would say, like, maybe there shouldn’t be a capitalist class, but like that’s not the fight that we have here in front of us. Like, that’s— that fight has to happen somewhere else. And so, yeah, it’s—
DAVID: Yeah, he— he said that— he said that they need to be profitable for his players to make a lot of money, so his sympathy with the owners lied in that, “Yeah, I want you guys to be profitable. I want you guys to make a bunch of money. Just— you can’t make all your money by digging into our pockets, right?”
BOBBY: Uh-hmm.
DAVID: “You’re gonna have to figure out how to take the— the games that we’re putting on and make— you know, we’re putting on the show, you got to figure out how to make more money off of that and I think that’s— that’s where his interests align with the— with the— with the bosses, was, “We want baseball to be profitable.”
BOBBY: And that is the ultimate irony of the unionization of sports and Major League Baseball, is that it forced the owners to think about the fact that they had to grow the pool if they keep want— they wanted to keep making the same amount of money or even more— or better margins. They had to grow the pool and grow the pool and grow the pool, because they couldn’t just continue to get fat off fucking over players and all of the workers in their industry, even though they still would like to do that, and they still do that on every occasion that they’re allowed to do that with stadium workers and whoever— part-time workers, and minor leaguers, and coaches, and, you know, first-year analysts, whoever they can fuck over whenever possible for— to— to win the spreadsheet wars. But, like, they now realize that baseball is this, like, 360-degree business that they needed to expand on. And that’s the— that is the reason that Juan Soto makes $765 million over 15 years, not because he is some greedy player who, you know, has taken more than he’s worth. Is because people like him, decades and decades and decades of players of making baseball more interesting, have grown the pool to the point where now his portion of it is just that big. Like that should be the eye-opening moment, I think, for people. And I— what I’m—
ALEX: And— and a little— and a little bit of insider trading, too, I think that played into it.
BOBBY: Well, hey, now back off my man, Steve. We’re not here to— to litigate SEC cases that are closed, Alex. God. Juan Soto is a Met. He is David Hill. You can find his writing— where can you— where can people find all your stuff, Dave?
DAVID: You can find me at davidhillonline.com. You know, I’m on social media. I’m writing running for Rolling Stone right now. I have a book called The Vapors, which you can purchase at any bookstore. I wish— I hope you would. It’s, it’s almost the holiday season. It’s a great book to get a dad or an uncle in your life. It does really well with dads for some reason. And, yeah, that’s— that’s where you can find me.
ALEX: Thanks so much for joining us.
DAVID: Hey, thanks for having me. This was fun.
[theme]
BOBBY: Thanks to Dave Hill. Thanks to Marvin Miller. Thanks to Korn.
ALEX: Uh-huh.
BOBBY: Thanks to Avenge Sevenfold for all their great works—
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: —that propelled Alex to the point in his life that he is at now. And without them, who knows? Maybe he wouldn’t have been at New York University. Maybe he wouldn’t have met me in that journalism class. Who knows?
ALEX: It’s quite possible.
BOBBY: Without Avenge Sevenfold.
ALEX: I might— I might have— I might have Synyster Gates and M. Shadows to thank for my— the path I took here.
BOBBY: We all contain multitudes of influences. We don’t know how we end up places, but we do. You have Avenge Sevenfold, I have Linkin Park. You know?
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Different strokes, different folks. Thank you to everybody who listened. Thank you to everybody who has been listening along all month here on the Tipping Pitches Main Character Month. We’ve been putting a lot of work into these episodes and I hope that it’s appreciated by folks at home. And I hope that these can be kind of evergreen episodes that people come back to as ways of understanding these different characters as they go through reformations and re-imaginations and all those sorts of things. Next week on the feed, the original plan was to do a kind of miniseries, mini narrative series about basically the Oakland A’s stadium workers or just stadium workers and— and the work that they do, and how it operates, and how organization and how unions have impacted that work and protected that work and dignified that work. Unfortunately, the union that represents the California Stadium Workers also— well, this is not unfortunate for them, but unfortunately, for our purposes, for doing this, this specific episode, union that represents them also represents hotel workers in California and they’re in the midst of a very big strike. And so in terms of organizing this conversation with the communications and— and the communications folks and the organizers at Unite Here, which is the— this union that I’m referring to. It was just a little bit too difficult to be able to pull this all together in the month of December, as they’re in the midst of the strike and the holidays are coming up. And so our goal is to be able to do that before the end of this off season. But in terms of main character month, we’re gonna have to push that back. So next week, we haven’t exactly narrowed in on— on the plan yet, but we’ve talked about A-Rod, who’s a player. We’ve talked about Rob Manfred, who’s the commissioner. We’ve talked about Marvin Miller on this episode here, who’s head of the executive— or head of the Major League Baseball Players Association. And really, like, I think a lot of the context of Tipping Pitches is we talk about ownership.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: And so the episode that we’re going to do next week, I think, is going to try to grasp, like, how we got to the— how we got to this version of the modern owner from the long lineage of ownership evolution. So we don’t know exactly what shape that’s going to take yet, but we’ll figure something out that I— I assume that everybody will be on board for, but that’s just me, you know, keeping house here at the end of the pod.
ALEX: Right. I’m gonna go back and read and— and look at all of Charlie Finley’s old YouTube videos where he gives grindset—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —advice—
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: —in all the podcast appearances that he did. It’s really insightful stuff.
BOBBY: I mean, his deleted tweets are really embarrassing.
ALEX: They are really embarrassing. Yeah, it’s surprising he did not get canceled earlier.
BOBBY: Charlie Finley is uncancelable. Thank you everybody for listening. If you want to check out the Stealing Home book club conversation that we had with Eric Nusbaum that came out this past week on the Tipping Pitches Patreon feed. You can find out how to get access to that when you sign up at patreon.com/tippingpitches. Our top membership tier gets you access to the bonus feed. The other two tiers get you access to stuff like the Slack and other things as well, other perks as well. All that information is available on that page. Thank you to everybody who has been signing up, who has been sharing messages of support for the work that we’ve been doing over there. It’s really funny how much more organized we are every time the offseason rolls around. During the season, it’s just like, “Yeah, I don’t know, man. Something probably happened in the last week.” And then in the offseason, we actually have to, like, get our shit together, so we put a lot of work, and we appreciate that everybody has been appreciating it. So I think that’ll do it for this week, unless you have something to add. No more Korn thoughts? Do you want to hum a couple bars of your favorite Korn song?
ALEX: I’ve never—
BOBBY: People got this far in the pod. They would love to hear you.
ALEX: Right. I know. I’ve never been a Korn guy. I’m not gonna lie. Either the food or the music, really.
BOBBY: Is that right? Not the food? You’re not like—
ALEX: The food— the food
BOBBY: What about like esquites? That’s delicious.
ALEX: Yeah, I love that. Actually, it’s mostly just specifically corn on the cob that I— I struggle with a little bit.
BOBBY: I mean, it’s just a fucking hassle. Like, that’s just—
ALEX: It’s just a hassle, yeah.
BOBBY: Like, I get that shit up in my teeth for weeks.
ALEX: Right. But, like, a little corn salsa. Oh, my God. It’s over.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah. My mom makes, like, a little roasted Mexican street corn whenever we have, like, barbecue or whatever.
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: That shit rocks, dude. I’m getting hungry—
ALEX: So good.
BOBBY: —just thinking about this. We gotta end this pod. Thank you everybody for listening. Thanks to Dave again. Hope you all enjoyed. We’ll talk to you next week.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello, everybody. I’m Alex Rodriguez. Tipping Pitches. Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most. Tipping Pitches. So, we’ll see you next week. See ya!
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