Inside Baseball: The Best of Tom Verducci (5 page)

Postscript: The Mets finally won a division title in 2006 and owner Fred Wilpon at long last opened his new ballpark in 2009. To this day the 1993 Mets, with the sixth-highest payroll at the time, stand as a monument to poorly constructed ball clubs.

JULY 18, 1994

On a midsummer night in Boston, teenage sensation Alex Rodriguez
made his big league debut with the Mariners

U
NDER THE FOG-SHROUDED LIGHT TOWERS OF
historic Fenway Park last Friday, the Seattle Mariners sent out as their starting shortstop a kid 13 months removed from his high school graduation and who shaves once a month. “If it doesn’t work out,” said Mariners manager Lou Piniella before the game, “I’m the one who’s going to be criticized.” No one could know for certain whether someone 18 years old was ready for the big leagues.

“No,” said Alex Rodriguez. “I know I’m ready.”

So when he took his infield position with the old stadium bursting with its usual summertime crowd, Rodriguez turned to 43-year-old teammate Rich Gossage, who was walking past him toward the rightfield bullpen, and cracked, “You nervous, kid?” Then he winked. Empowered as much by self-assurance as by his remarkable talent, Rodriguez showed on first impression that his promotion was no rush job. Last Friday he handled all three of his chances in the field splendidly, especially the one that required a backhand stop and a long throw from the outfield grass. The next day he made an even more spectacular play; he dove headlong toward third for a smash, righted himself quickly and nearly got an impossible out at first base with a laser of a throw.

After going 0 for 3 in his debut, Rodriguez got his first two hits on Saturday, and the first time he reached base, Piniella gave him the green light. Rodriguez easily swiped second on the second pitch. But on Sunday, he had a rough afternoon, going 0 for 4 with three strikeouts and making a wild throw for an error.

Even though Rodriguez, who will turn 19 on July 27, is the youngest player to make the major leagues since Jose Rijo joined the Yankees 37 days short of his 19th birthday in 1984, he carried himself like a veteran. There were only occasional lapses when he gave away his age. That happened, for example, when he told Gossage he had played Class A ball this year in Appleton, Wis. “I played there once, too,” the ancient Mariner said.

“When was that? Back in ’88?” Rodriguez asked.

“Uh, no, 1971,” Gossage said.

“Wow,” said Rodriguez. “I was
born
in 1975.”

Seattle selected Rodriguez with the first pick of the amateur draft in June 1993 and signed him to a three-year, $1.3 million contract on Aug. 30—too late for him to play in the minors last season. This year the Mariners had planned to give him half a season at Appleton and half a season at Class AA Jacksonville before calling him up in September, as his contract stipulates. Rodriguez did play 65 games for Appleton, where he hit .319, but he lasted only 17 games with Jacksonville, hitting .288 there, before Piniella convinced Seattle general manager Woody Woodward that the young shortstop was needed immediately.

Piniella pressed hard for the move after an ugly 9–3 loss to the Orioles on July 4 in which second baseman Rich Amaral made a critical double error. Amaral was one of four Seattle second basemen who had combined for 16 errors this season. Piniella knew that Rodriguez was a wizard on defense and that Felix Fermin, who had played solidly at short but lacked range, could move to second base. When Rodriguez made his debut, the Mariners ranked 12th in the league in fielding and were 12 games under .500 (36–48).

“Let’s face it,” said Piniella, “if we were close to .500 and playing well, this wouldn’t have happened. We thought he’d be our shortstop next year anyway, and he was going to be here in September, so we’ve only moved his timetable up by six or seven weeks.” Rodriguez was immediately welcomed by Ken Griffey Jr., the first pick of the 1987 draft, who reached the majors five years ago at 19. Griffey insisted that Rodriguez take a locker next to his own, whereupon he proceeded to needle the kid relentlessly. Griffey handed him coupons for McDonald’s, saying, “You’re making one-point-three; when you get sent down after the All-Star break, take the guys out to lunch down there.”

But the 6′3″ Rodriguez would appear to have staying power. “It’s funny,” he said. “Last year I would have paid anything to go watch a major league game. This year I’m playing in one.”

Postscript: Even at 18, Rodriguez had the poise and polish of a 10-year veteran, and not just between the white lines. I remember how he asked questions—about me, my job, the major leagues, anything. It was apparent even then that this was not just the debut of another phenom, but the coming out of a player who could be among the alltime greats.

SEPTEMBER 19, 1994

A snapshot of Marvin Miller, the former trade unionist
who became baseball’s pioneering labor leader

H
E WAS A ’60S RADICAL IN A SHIMMERING SHARKSKIN
suit. He was an outsider who dared challenge one of America’s most cherished and, to his great consternation, most unwavering institutions: the game of baseball. Viewed through the corrective lens of history, though, Marvin Miller advanced an ideology that wasn’t all that radical, even if in the buttoned-down world of baseball, his wardrobe was.

Miller held that a ballplayer should not be bound to one club for life. He thought a $1,000 increase in the minimum annual salary over 20 years was grossly insufficient. Is that such extremist thinking? Well, it was in 1966, when Miller began what would be his 17 undefeated years as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Miller, more than anyone else in the past 40 years, changed baseball’s very structure, and he did so with the logic of someone not hidebound by the mythology and blind customs of the game. “I believe this was the first time the players reached out and got an experienced trade unionist,” he says. “It wasn’t that it was me. It was my background and expertise that were essential.” He had come from the United Steelworkers of America, where he had gained vast experience in collective bargaining. When Miller first looked at baseball’s standard player’s contract, he thought it was “one of the worst labor documents I’d ever seen.” It would have to be changed.

Starting with one battered filing cabinet and $5,400 in the association’s checking account, Miller piled victory upon victory. “It’s not difficult to make major strides,” he once said, “in an industry a hundred years behind in labor relations.” In 1968 he obtained an increase in the minimum salary from $6,000 a year (it had been $5,000 in ’47) to $10,000; over time he assembled for the players what Ray Grebey, the former owners’ representative, called “the best pension plan in America”; he secured the salary arbitration system in ’73; and he held his membership together through a 50-day strike in ’81—“the association’s finest hour,” as he called it in his memoirs.

Miller’s agenda was aided mightily when, following the 1969 season, outfielder Curt Flood of the Cardinals made his courageous stand to protest baseball’s reserve clause, under which a club was allowed to control a player’s services until it decided to release or trade him. Flood refused to accept a trade to Philadelphia after his contract had expired, claiming that the reserve clause constituted a violation of antitrust law. Flood fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against him. It was, however, a short-lived victory for baseball owners. On Dec. 23, 1975, when arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were free agents after playing the previous season without contracts, the reserve clause was effectively struck down. “The reserve clause was the most abominable thing I’d ever seen,” says Miller. “I didn’t think it would stand up.”

He was better at labor relations than the owners—and he knew it. Baseball’s most powerful man was just 5′8″, had a withered right arm since birth and never raised his voice in negotiations, relying instead on deep sighs or tiny laughs at things unfunny, and on a sense of righteousness that infuriated the owners. “He is a prisoner of his own ego above all things,” wrote former commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat
said that Miller “would do baseball a favor if he disappeared or got lost or found the nearest hole and jumped into it.”

He is 77 now, still living in his 32nd-floor apartment on the East Side of Manhattan and available to the players’ association whenever it should seek his wisdom. Having established for the players both purpose and freedom, he is the association’s George Washington and Abraham Lincoln all in one. “It’s rightfully been called the most solid labor organization in the country, and not just in sports,” he says. “Considering where we began, I think I’m proudest of that.”

Strangely, while the game’s labor wars have reached new heights of contentiousness, Miller’s own image has seemingly been enhanced over time—from, at worst, that of some activist heaving homemade bombs at baseball to, at best, that of a champion of reason, who gradually earned the grudging respect of even his adversaries.

Postscript: I interviewed Miller in his New York apartment and admired both for their understated elegance. I always had considered him an undefeated champion—until 2003, that is, when the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee, composed mostly of Hall of Fame players, rejected his nomination to the Hall. I still don’t understand how that could happen.

FEBRUARY 27, 1995