The Chris Moeller Archives

Forever a scab

In 1994 and 1995, while baseball players were on strike against their bosses to protect the hard-won right to free agency and to combat attempts to cap salaries amid what were soon-to-be-demolished claims of Major League Baseball's fiscal vulnerability, a handful of gutless rodents, hoping to leapfrog themselves over more principled co-workers and unable to find work on an equal playing field, made the decision to walk across the picket line.

The impact of their action is still being felt in small ways inside the baseball world today with the Players Association's permanent refusal to allow these remaining active players (now 5 in active number) to join its ranks, and by extension, to have their likenesses included on MLBPA-licensed merchandise. As this curiously-forgiving Kotaku article points out, the players are still excluded from having their names appear on MLBPA-associated video games, or recently, in the case of Brendan Donnelly or Kevin Millar, on merchandise commemorating World Championship clubs.

Millar made his reputation on the diamond with the 2004 Champion Boston Red Sox, popularizing a clubhouse catchphrase "cowboy up" to describe the team's collective personality and drawing legions of Scarlet Hose rooters to his side through corresponding media reports. Was Millar also "cowboy(ing) up" when he went out as the lone gunslinger in 1995, delaying an end to the unpopular strike and compromising the bargaining position and financial livelihoods of his colleagues?

Kotaku's Owen Good is correct that the Baseball Players Association is not the United Auto Workers. The MLBPA is the most powerful union in the Northern Hemisphere, while the UAW is a nearly-defunct, bleeding-from-the-gut union all-but-destroyed over the years by corrupt alliances between its compromised leaders and the company bosses and politicians that sell them down the river on everything from trade agreements to health care to war profiteering efforts that murder the children of the working class.

I have tears streaming down my face for Kevin Millar, who has missed out on the birthright of having one's name appear on a video game and has had teammates lobby for his union membership while he's done nothing but cash enormous paychecks made possible by a group of men who put their reputations, careers, and the livelihoods of their families on the line for him and his, and so far as we know, he's never once bothered to even send Curt Flood's widow a small percentage of one of his fat checks. Now, the penalty box should swing open because... why is it? Because 15 years of water has passed under the bridge? Believe me, Kevin Millar has made out just fine. He's a 38-year-old player who has been able to cobble together a 12-year big league career despite remarkably unremarkable statistics, no speed, little power, little ability to hit for average, and being a right-handed hitter than can play really just one position on the field (first base). He made his choice between his co-workers and management years ago, and management has repaid him handsomely for his loyalty.

Indeed, the list of former replacement players (38) who were able to put together a lengthy career-- Millar, Donnelly, Brian Daubach, Ron Mahay, Cory Lidle, Damien Miller, Shane Spencer, Matt Herges, Rick Reed, Jamie Walker, etc.-- is a who's who of middling players. There's not a .300 hitter, a 30 home run guy, a 20-game winner, or a Gold Glover in the group. It's ridiculous to claim that their continued-exclusion from the union is a long-dead labor issue when 5 of these 38 mediocre talents are still being offered roster spots even 15 years after the fact. It's not just the union that has a long memory.

The licensing of players' likenesses is serious business. It's created the war chest that has made the union the strong one that it is. If it weren't for the Players Association, Millar may have his name on a video game, but he may be getting all of $125 per year for it. That's the amount the Topps trading card company gave each player in return for the use of his image in the early 1960s, in the days just before Marvin Miller became the union's Executive Director. Today, that licensing agreement funds the players' additional income, the union's rainy day fund and multiple charities.

Despite their actions, Millar and the other strikebreakers have benefited plenty from the union. Of course, the high salaries available for players in the business are thanks directly to Miller, his successor, Donald Fehr, and the Association. The collectively-bargained salary minimums apply to them. They get a pension, they're equally eligible for the bargained terms of free agency, get access to recently-negotiated and enacted bereavement leave, and even representation in salary arbitration and disciplinary hearings. I would argue that that's more than they deserve already.

We once lived in harsher times for the bosses and their rats...


After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab.
A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.
No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not.

Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commision in the british army.
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.

Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country.
A scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.

Jack London

posted by CM @ 7:08 PM