Marvin Miller, the first Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Union, died today at the age of 95. Few men, and certainly no executive, cast a bigger shadow upon Major League Baseball than did Marvin Miller. That he is not a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame is a supreme injustice, and proof that even decades after his retirement, he continues to rankle the baseball establishment.
I will not recount the historic contributions of Marvin Miller. If you are a baseball fan, you already know them, and you know his place in history. As an obit I just read on Yahoo! Sports just put it, if you were to draw up a list of the most influential people in baseball history, and if after five names your list does NOT include Marvin Miller, then you need to start your list over again.
At the SABR Convention I attended in Cincinnati a few years back, Miller was the Keynote Speaker, and it was fascinating to hear him. Well in his eighties and long retired at the time, Miller still retained all of the passion that he brought to the job when he first took it in 1966. Every player in MLB should wear some sort of patch on their uniforms in 2013 in tribute to Miller, but I doubt that the Lords of the Realm will allow it to happen.
RIP Marvin Miller.
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