Rebellion on the Diamond

...By this measure, Koufax and Drysdale are worth $1.8 million to the Dodgers (and without going into a detailed breakdown, that seems a fair enough figure...

...The experiment was costly for everybody, but the ceiling was rescinded...

...In the vernacular, he "plays out his option...

...The game-before a full house and national television-actually started 17 minutes late, and only by a vote of 11-9 among the stars did it go on at all...

...This means only one team may negotiate with a "free agent," a maneuver that truly extends the Reserve Clause from athletic cradle to grave...

...Despite its soothing, almost innocuous name, the Reserve Clause gives a team undisputed control over a player once it signs him...

...Finally, the player had a real fulcrum that could lead to a complete change in athletic bargaining...

...KOUFAX and Drysdale, of course, have rocked the very foundations of baseball by showing the way to breaking the restraint of that combination...

...The owners have succeeded in retaining the Clause against repeated attacks...

...The Supreme Court obviated any full scale retreat by a 1953 per curia decision in Toolson v. New York Yankees upholding the 1922 decision that professional baseball was a local matter...

...But when Danny Gardella of the Giants threatened to sue to get his job back, baseball had to surrender for the first time...

...The strike failed at the last minute, but the relieved owners quickly came across with a pension plan, an established minimum salary (now $7,500), a maximum possible salary cut (now 25 per cent), and guaranteed spring training expense money...

...The seeds of this revolution were sown in early spring when Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Los Angeles Dodgers' two most valuable players-on the field as well as at the ticket office-linked their pitching arms to demand record threeyear contracts which together would have totaled more than a million dollars...

...Next year, a whole infield could hold out together, and this tactic could be extended to other sports...

...Thus, more than anything else, the owners were shaken by the fact that Koufax and Drysdale were working together...

...They were accused of being unfair to the management because either of them might be injured, maimed or killed...

...They gained in 1910 when they formed the Baseball Players Fraternity, and again in 1946 when a Harvard man named Robert F. Murphy started a players' union and tried to strike the Pittsburgh Pirates...

...This seems a fair escape, for no matter how emasculating the Reserve Clause must be, it is a clear and legal necessity if any major pro league is to avoid competitive chaos...

...The NFL apparently will not take them, lest it give substance to the AFL'S existence, and the other AFL teams seem to fear that if they trade for Ladd and Faison and make them happy their own dissidents will be encouraged to follow the same path...

...Only two years ago at the National Basketball Association All-Star Game in Boston, the All-Stars refused to go on the court until the league president, Walter Kennedy, promised that the owners would agree to consider a pension plan...

...Baseball purists, blind to the skilfulness-not to mention justice -of the performance, were aghast at such sacrilege...

...In the case of Koufax and Drysdale, the element of drawing power, simple and obvious as it is, was introduced into organized sports for the first time...

...What is most significant about the pitchers' ploy, however, is not the amount of money it succeeded in wringing out of their tight-fisted boss, Walter O'Malley, but the permanent damage it may have done to the infamous and often unsuccessfully attacked Reserve Clause...

...50 it was not really the pitchers' terms as such that set club owners worrying...

...Never before did a player holding out for a better contract have any power...

...And it is true that the one thing the owners have valued above their immediate competitive self-interests, the Reserve Clause, is really not only the Achilles Heel of professional sports but also, in a sense, the heart...

...It could also set off a labor-management struggle the likes of which has not been seen since unions first began their organizing efforts...

...Henry V. Lucas, the St...

...But in the wake of the KoufaxDrysdale maneuver and Miller's election, management will surely have to make compromises, and some of them are obvious...

...Opponents of the Reserve Clause have yet to put it more succinctly, although various members of Congress have been trying off and on since 1951, and several disgruntled playerswell, ex-players-have also had their cuts over the years...

...It was while trying to work out of this tight spot that Koufax and Drysdale threw a few new curves at the game: 1) They bargained together-"collectively," if you are particularly devilish...

...Frank Deford is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated magazine...

...They were guilty only of asking in advance for what they would get in the end anyway...

...One certain object of Miller's scrutiny will be the Reserve Clause...

...In fact, by adding the free-agent draft, a device perfected in the National Football League, they have succeeded in making it even more powerful and pervasive...

...the team may trade or sell him without his consent or knowledge, but he can negotiate only with his owners...

...The two players were traded to Houston in January, but the deal was voided by ex-football Commissioner Joe Foss because, it seems, the Reserve Clause has been expanded now to include the Tenth Commandment: Houston was judged guilty of coveting the two disgruntled players too openly...

...The pension plan was quickly instituted...

...and when it came down to the real dickering, he had to deal with the wiley old general manager...

...Inevitably, the specter of unionism scares up new benefits...

...So now, within four years, the Court had decreed that baseball was not a business, but that football was-decisions so patently contradictory that the Court itself hastened to declare that "if this ruling is unrealistic and illogical" then let Congress decide...

...For example, the two football leagues already have an option clause that permits a player to become a free agent one year after announcing such intention...

...The Reserve Clause has been under suspicion virtually from the day of its creation in 1879...

...It was developed then by the Boston club owner, and within five years it caused such a furor that a new league, the Union Association, was formed in protest to the two existmg major leagues...

...Professional sports bigwigs maintain that it is the keystone of competition and, theoretically, of equality...

...The two started more than half the Dodgers' games last year, won 49 of them, and then pitched three of the four Los Angeles World's Series victories...

...Perhaps team owners are just as expendable...

...Most general managers, being ex-ballplayers, are simply not prepared to cope with men who come into negotiations with a few weapons, like counter-proposals or options...

...This is particularly true in the case of a franchise's faithful old retainers (witness Roger Maris of the Yankees), which Koufax and Drysdale definitely are...

...Koufax and Drysdale, they argued, were breaking the hearts of youngsters-Little Leaguers some would emphasizewho cherish the impression that ballplayers only mark fretful time all winter waiting for spring training...

...The legislators, particularly the late Senator Estes Kefauver, Senator Philip Hart, and Congressman Emmanuel Celler, have wrestled with sports ever since...

...Certainly lesser players could not, for they appreciate that whenever the ceiling is raised some of the increment eventually works its way down to a lower level...

...But it is not difficult to imagine how helpful he will be in implementing collective bargaining strategy in his new $50,000-a-year position...

...If it attracts more publicity and sympathy, the Ladd-Faison affair could become the next important case in the march toward athletic emancipation...

...The hypothesis has not been tested since 1890 when John Montgomery Ward -then a pitcher, but later a hotshot New York lawyer-led most of the day's star players into a league of their own after the entrenched owners instituted a $2,000 salary limit...

...2) they introduced an intermediary, Koufax' lawyer, J. William Hayes, to act as their agent...

...On the advice of a lawyer that the sport just might not be "incidentally" interstate anymore-because of radio and television broadcasts of games-Gardella's suit was hastily and amiably settled out of court, and the jumpers (notably Sal Maglie) were permitted back in Organized Baseball...

...Most leagues are unbalanced enough as it is even with the safeguard...

...Surprisingly-especially since Willie Mays had just signed a twoyear contract with the San Francisco Giants-defenders of the faith were offended even more by the fact that the pitchers wanted three-year contracts...

...Ladd and Faison do not even approach the star magnitude of Koufax and Drysdale, but maybe the latter two have paved the way sufficiently to make that point academic...

...The Supreme Court ruled for the Nationals, stating that baseball involved "local affairs" only, that the interstate travel required to play games was only "incidental," and that "baseball was not a commercial enterprise...

...In 1955, however, the Court began to reverse itself, ruling that boxing was subject to the antitrust laws, and in 1957 it asserted that pro football was too...

...The union man won, which suggests how the wind is blowing...

...In the mid-'40s when several players defected to the Mexican League, the then Commissioner Happy Chandler summarily banned the jumpers for life...

...In the old days a player at least had the initial opportunity to choose his master...

...and 4) they actually promulgated firm plans of alternative employment...

...Without it, they contend, the rich teams would soon buy up all the best players, the weak teams would get weaker, and soon the League would be destroyed by competitive and financial imbalance...

...The player is thus literally reserved for his team-just as, say, East Germany is reserved for the Soviet Union or Willie Sutton is reserved for the Lewisburg Pen...

...The amount of money they were demanding brought the biggest noise of all, but only the jealous could seriously complain...

...Then, too, there is nothing to prevent a whole team from holding out together...

...The question of the Clause and antitrust laws has been batting around since 1922, when the Baltimore club of the short-lived Federal League sued the National League...

...Unfortunately, at least in the case of football, the players who have sought to play out their options seem to have been carefully blacklisted...

...if the rich teams could indiscriminately gobble up all the talent, the game would soon be played entirely with checks rather than with bats and balls...

...Carrying the whole process a step further, it is worth noting that in the last decade many boxing champions have promoted their own fights and virtually eliminated the promoter's middleman role...

...Louis owner in the UA, described the clause this way at the time: "It reserves all that is good for the owners, leaving the remainder for the players...

...Since such advocates equate baseball with the Fourth of July, the pitchers were accused of blatant anti-Americanism for announcing their acceptance of movie contracts and exhibition tours of Japan...

...Even if the measure is halved, though, their joint demand of $333,000 a year for three years is not unreasonable...

...Shortly before the baseball season opened this month, of course, Koufax and Drysdale agreed to one-year contracts that reportedly will bring them $135,000 and $120,000 respectively-ranking them among the three or four highest paid players in the history of team sports...

...Last year, Hart finally got a bill through the Senate that exempts the Reserve Clause from antitrust laws and therefore permits the owners to carry on as they have for years...

...Athletes have almost always profited from their revolts...

...AFTER THE KOUFAX-DRYSDALE AFFAIR Rebellion on the Diamond By Frank Deford As if it did not already have enough revolutions to cope with both abroad and at home, the United States may soon find itself faced with still another one that could shatter the foundation of its national pastime...

...Nor could the Los Angeles front office claim much pain, for without Koufax and Drysdale the Dodgers are a poor team...

...As a sideline, Drysdale also happens to be the best hitter on the team...

...Celler last week called baseball "a combination in restraint of trade" and declared that the House Committee would refuse even to consider the Senate bill...

...Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison, a couple of huge Negro defensive linesmen for the San Diego Chargers, will become free agents on May 1, but they have nowhere to go (except possibly, as they now threaten, to Canada...

...Some players wanted Bob Feller, who grew up in baseball, others wanted Judge Robert Cannon, the law...

...It was their togetherness and their agent that shook up baseball's hierarchy...

...Otherwise they may gel beaten at their own business, if indeed, baseball really is one...

...3) they demanded a multi-year contract...

...maybe the pigs can run the Athletic Farm without help...

...But the bill is still stuck in the House Judiciary committee with Celler, and it is possible that the furor surrounding the KoufaxDrysdale affair might spawn a bill that does not take so kindly to the Reserve Clause...

...Miller, while campaigning for the post, was careful not to give the impression that he had anything drastic in mind...

...Under this setup, the teams in a league rotate choices in selecting amateur players...

...Perhaps, by their example, Koufax and Drysdale have finally forced the owners to admit, as Henry V Lucas said in 1884, that they have reserved too much for themselves-and that with Marvin J. Miller on the horizon and J. William Hayes already here, they had better amend the Treaty of 1879...

...It is a strong argument...

...As a result, it is no longer presumptuous to speculate that someday soon a Johnny Unitas or a Wilt Chamberlain or even a Sandy Koufax will be paid with a share of the gate-along with Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor and other celebrities...

...he could command but an iota of his baseball salary anywhere else...

...From then on baseball was a law unto itself...

...An official of the Houston Astros estimated that the two players were worth $200,000 last year in gate receipts and concessions to his club...

...He had no one else that he could play ball for...

...Actually, though, superstars are seldom docked more than a token amount in pay after a year of bad performance or sustained injury...

...Koufax, possibly the best pitcher in all history, draws people to the ballpark who would otherwise never go near one...

...Nor are the club owners insensitive to the fact that a United Steelworkers vice-president, Marvin J. Miller, has just been elected overwhelmingly as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players' Association...