Rethinking Fandom by Craig Calcaterra

Author:Craig Calcaterra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2022-02-02T17:25:34+00:00

During Miller’s tenure as the executive director of the MLBPA, pensions were fully funded, per diems were dramatically increased, free agency was achieved, and players’ average annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982. There had been no run of success like that in the history of sports labor. Many, in fact, have argued that Miller made the MLBPA the most powerful and successful union in the country, bar none. In the twenty years after Miller’s departure as the head of the union, the owners attempted to claw back the gains players had made as a result of his work, culminating in that 1994–95 strike, which was forced not by greedy players seeking even more money than they already made, but by the efforts of then-acting MLB commissioner Bud Selig and a handful of like-minded owners who were hell-bent on breaking the union.

The union history of the other major sports broadly tracks that of baseball’s. In 1955, Tim Horton, the star defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs and namesake of the coffee and donut franchise, broke his leg in a game, wasn’t paid for the time he missed, and had his salary cut the following year, with the team citing his decrease in effectiveness. The treatment of Horton, who worked a construction job in the off-season to make ends meet, was not uncommon. It inspired Ted Lindsay of the Detroit Red Wings to attempt to rally players to form a union during the late 1950s. The Red Wings promptly traded Lindsay to Chicago in an effort to cripple the nascent unionization drive. Other hockey union organizers would get traded or demoted to the minor leagues solely because they were gaining traction in organizing. It wasn’t until a decade after Lindsay’s efforts began that enough players had banded together to convince the owners to recognize the National Hockey League Players Association. As in baseball, the NHL players were forced to go on strike on a number of occasions in order to secure and consolidate early gains. They went on a short strike in 1992, a longer strike in 1994, and were subjected to an owner-imposed lockout in 2004, which cost the entire season.

In basketball, there was no pension plan, no per diems, no minimum wage, and no healthcare benefits before efforts at unionization began to take hold in the mid-to-late 1950s. The average player salary was $8,000. Then, the league’s top player, Bob Cousy, organized players who collectively threatened to pull out of the 1955 All-Star game if the owners did not agree to sit down and bargain with players over issues like limiting the number of unpaid exhibition games and being paid for promotional appearances. The walkout was averted, but it was not until two years later, when Cousy and the players threatened to strike, that the union was officially recognized. Early victories for the union included a $7 per diem, moving expenses for players who were traded midseason, and a bigger cut of playoff revenues. There

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.