How America Commie-Baited A Baseball Hero

[Starry Messenger]

http://deadspin.com/how-america-commie-baited-a-baseball-hero-499801964

<snip>

When Miller, who died last year at age 95, became the union's executive director in 1966, players were underpaid and bound to their teams for life. By the time he left in 1982, the reserve clause was dead, the MLBPA had become one of the strongest unions in the country, and the landscape of professional sports labor had been transformed.

It didn't come easy. Miller was vilified by owners and coaches—those who stood to lose something if players ever realized their value. When Indians manager Birdie Tebbetts called a team meeting to repeatedly denounce Miller as a "communist" and urged players not to vote for him, it was an echo of an older witch-hunt that had set its sights on Miller just after the war.

We've obtained Miller's FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request. You can read the entire thing below, 82 pages of information gleaned from Miller's co-workers and friends, from FBI informants, from the trash of someone Miller may or may not have even known. All of this was done with the goal of determining if Marvin Miller was working toward the overthrow of the American government. Spoiler alert: He was not.

<snip>

One thing that did repeatedly come up in interviews with Miller's associates: his views on race. As one FBI source put it, Miller was "violently vehement" in his opposition to any kind of discrimination.

In the minds of investigators, this was a mark against his Americanism...

<snip>

[socialist_n_TN]

1. And these were the same owners who have enjoyed...

a free pass from competition through the Congressionally mandated exemption from anti-trust laws? Ah, these hysterical rich people. Or is that HYPOCRITICAL rich people? Thanks Starry.

[marmar]

2. K/r ...... I didn't know about this.

[TBF]

3. Everytime I hear someone talk about greedy players I get furious -

they play for 10 years in any professional sport if they are lucky and heaven help them if they play football - they'll be lucky to make it to their 50th birthday with all the injuries. No one ever asks how much the owners make behind the scenes.

[socialist_n_TN]

4. "No one ever asks how much the owners make behing the scenes."...

And that my dear comrade, IS the main question. IF elite athletes make millions, then you can BET the owners make BILLIONS. And they don't have to wreck their bodies to do so.