As well as commercial endorsments they were paid for, as well as receiving discounts on cars, TV’s, furs for their wife, etc. just because they shopped at a particular store.

As well as getting free drinks and dinner every time they showed in particural places so the fans could see them.

That was pre-Miller. Since then, the players receive a pension (which is better than politicians get), a share of the merchandising, as well so many other benefits I can’t remember them all.

Say what you will about the owners, but the players have NEVER at any time been poor and abused. They have been a privileged class since 1869 and continue to get more privliged all the time.

They benefit from the sport without acutally having to incur any of the costs of it. Sounds like they have a really good thing going, and people should stop pretending they don’t.

Here’s what free agency did, besides lead to higher player wages: 1965, again the year before Miller became head of the MLBPA, was the first time in 6 years that the Yankees were not the AL rep in the World Series. It is now unusual for a team to win a pennant even3 years in a row–it has happened twice since 1970.

You can believe that entertainers being paid like entertainers, and taking an equitable share of the pie, is bad for baseball–or hurts the enjoyment of it…but it is not a belief based in logic.

and search through the list of HOFer. HOFers include players, managers, umpires, and executives. There is no such thing as a HOF writer/announcer. They are recognized in the museum. If you think they are HOFer, then so is Pete Rose…because he’s in the museum, too.

I’m old enough. Old enough to have followed baseball back when it was about trading baseball cards and reading The Sporting News. Before players made millions.

Old enough to have learned, over a half-century of following baseball, that what mojosmagic is saying is utter crap. That, when I was young and didn’t know any better, the players I admired were treated like dirt. Marvin Miller brought 20th Century reality to MLB; the owners hated him for it. For that alone, he should be in the Hall of Fame.

Good old days? As Carly Simon sang, “these are the good old days.”

*dismounts high horse*

Whether Tim McCarver should be in the Hall of Fame as an announcer is another matter.

Doubleheaders were “a buck” because that was the only way fans would come to games, which were still mostly in the afternoon. In fact, that is why they would have doubleheaders in the first place: as an enticement to draw fans on weekends and sell them food and beer, since weekday attendance for the good teams was lower than your average Rays game today.

Their business model was based on keeping costs as low as possible. They did that by preventing the players from receiving their fair share for their talents, and doing everything in their power to prevent them from organizing.

The reserve clause was the last vestige of indentured servitude and Marvin Miller (with an assist from Peter Seitz) did away with it.

It’s not the Hall of Popularity.

It’s not the Hall of Virtue.

I thought it was supposed to be the place where those who have made the biggest contributions to the sport are honored for that, and that alone. Pete Rose should be in the Hall. He should remain banned from the game itself.

Even if you argue that the Hall of Fame is separate from the museum, it’s still a group with major historical significance – significance that it can’t escape.

Marvin Miller is easily one of the most important people ever associated with the sport – a person whose accomplishments are amazing. He’s belonged in the Hall for a long time. That he’s been slighted is purely political. And I bet he’s always been okay with his status – less so with the makeup of the various voting committees.

I have no problem with mentioning his case with the upcoming group of players now to be voted on. The reasons one or another gets in or gets snubbed may be different, but the underlying arbitrary nature of the voting is exactly the same.

As for the PED users, the best you can do is to try to figure out how much the numbers are tainted, and then use your judgement.

The good old days, as we’ve seen by revisiting the accomplishments of Marvin Miller, weren’t so good after all. There’s obviously more incentive to cheat now, but to say that the oldtimers were somehow more virtuous is naive to say the least. Human nature hasn’t changed for millions of years.

Young men in competitive situations tend to do whatever it takes to win, and the line between what’s okay and not okay is a very fine one, and one that starts and ends in different places depending on who you talk to.

That the Hall has left out Marvin Miller is understandable, considering his enemies, but it’s still a joke. If the Hall leaves out any of the new crop of potential members for anything other than how good they really were, it’s not only a joke, it signals the end of its relevance.

However, I agree with comments that Miller’s HoF case is not really comparable to the PED users.

Thomas2727, if you go to the Smithsonian in D.C., and you don’t visit ALL the wings, you may not see the Mercury Capsule or the Spirit of St. Louis. There’s more to see there than Archie Bunker’s chair, and there’s a lot to see at the HOF. I hope you can get back to the HOF, so you can make up for your earlier cursory visit.

There is no real logical connection between Hall of Fame cases of Miller and steroid users. They are two separate questions, other than the fact that they both affect the Hall’s reputation.

Craig’s argument seems to amount to “It’s not logical to oppose X, because Y already happened, and it was even worse”. This makes little sense. It’s like saying, I shouldn’t object to someone stealing $10 from me, because I was already lost $1000 in a robbery last week. Or, more to the point, it’s like saying we can’t object to letting every mediocre player into the Hall, since there were already some bad choices in the past.

Someone who wants to protect the Hall’s reputation should abide by the standards they think are correct, regardless of what happened before. I generally agree with Craig’s take on steroids, but this is weak stuff, especially when it is piggybacking on the story of someone’s death.

I probably spent 2 hours reading all of the plaques when I went to the Hall of Fame last Summer.
I definitely don’t recall seeing any plaque’s there for anybody for announcing.

Unfortunately did not make it into the library.

Its the “National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum”.

Two seperate entities under one roof.

Baseball certainly has a culture of maximizing profit at the expense of virtually anything else. But the worst of it (watering down the playoffs even further with the wild card play in game, for example), are ownership’s doing.

That says so much.