SABR 54: Listen to highlights from MLB Players Association 60th Anniversary Panel with Mark Armour, Ezra Frankel, Michael Haupert, Dan Levitt
On Saturday, August 1, 2026, the MLB Players Association 60th Anniversary Panel was held at SABR 54 at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown hotel in Cleveland, Ohio.
Panelists included award-winning historians Mark Armour, Dan Levitt, and Michael Haupert, along with Ezra Frankel, Director of Baseball Economics for the MLB Players Association. The panel was moderated by Katie Krall, SABR Director and a professor at Northwestern University.
- Audio: Click here to listen to the MLB Players Association 60th Anniversary Panel at SABR 54 (54:15; MP3)
Here are some highlights:
On the early origins of the MLB Players Association
- Armour: “The union started in 1954 and it was more or less a house union. Marvin Miller was pretty disdainful about it in his book, and I think (he was) justified. The owners essentially paid for the office, which is illegal in New York. And they more or less approved (and) actually hired the people that worked for the union. There was a judge, (Robert) Cannon, who worked for them for a while. Basically his job in practice was to essentially collect the various grievances that players had — which would be things like the showers aren’t working in the clubhouse in Milwaukee or I didn’t get paid for the spring training money they owed me — and he would just go to the owners and say, ‘Here is what we need.’ And the owners would say, yes, no, yes, no. Then he’d go back to the players and he’d say, ‘OK, here’s what you get.’ And that’s really all it was. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that some of the stronger union people (among) the players, which included Robin Roberts, Bob Friend, Jim Bunning — they were not liberals by any means, but they were people that thought the system was inefficient and didn’t work well for the players, and they needed stronger pensions and whatnot. So they worked on hiring a real labor person, which ended up being Marvin Miller. That was in 1966, 60 years ago. Over the years, they’ve more or less considered 1966 to be the beginning of the union, even though technically it was not. But I think it really at that point acted like what you would think of as a true partnership and with collective bargaining and all the rest.”
- Levitt: “The reason the union is called the Players Association, that was super intentional in terms of the syntax and the way that the organization was structured. This was the heyday of the steelworkers union and the Teamsters and the auto workers union. But clearly the players didn’t consider themselves in the same category as those sort of unionized employees. And they also weren’t. Their key issue was the pension fund. Sure, they would have liked more money (salaries) and they thought the reserve clause was probably unfair, but that was not what they were thinking about at that time. That was sort of the consciousness that Marvin Miller took a long time to help raise. It was really about the pension fund. When Norman Lewis, who was one of the early legal consultants to the association in the 1950s, said, ‘Well, maybe we should start looking at more than the pension fund for you guys,’ the owners suggested, ‘Well, maybe you should get rid of Norman Lewis.’ And the players did. So there was definitely this sense of they wanted to be collegial.”
On how Marvin Miller persuaded the players to support the union
- Haupert: “The union kind of coalesced around the idea that the players were unhappy with the way their pension was being handled. Originally, they were supposed to get a certain percentage of the All-Star Game revenue from television and tickets. Well, the problem was they had no idea how much revenue was really coming in because the owners wouldn’t check the contract with them. The TV contract wasn’t for the All-Star Game; it was an overall contract for a bunch of games. Major League Baseball’s owners said, ‘This is how much the All Star Game is worth.’ And the players suspected, rightly, that they were undervaluing the All-Star Game. And that’s how they really started to get movement in that direction. Ultimately, when Miller came along, he accepted a proposal from the owners that was really not a good one initially — the owners said, ‘Forget the percentage. We just want to give you a lump sum of money, and we’re going to give you $4 million.’ Miller was pretty sure that was less than the percentage they were supposed to get. But he couldn’t get access to the contract. So instead what he did was, he pointed out to Major League Baseball that the arrangement they had was illegal because they were paying for the offices of the players association, which was illegal under labor law. So they agreed they wouldn’t do that anymore. And the arrangement Miller made was instead of the players contributing $340 out of their salary, which they did for their pension, that MLB would just fund it completely with this $4 million. The $340 would then go not back to the players, but would go into union dues instead. And the $50 in union dues would go back to the players. So what Miller sold them was, ‘You’re going to get a $50 increase in your take home pay, no change whatsoever in anything else.’ But now all of a sudden you’re funding your own union, which is not only legal … but they (owners) inadvertently admitted that they really were a profitable business. And those admissions would come back to haunt them later on. So Miller gave up in the short run for the players, but very astutely gained in the long run. He gained a lot of leverage. … It put them on a really solid basis that they could bargain with in the future.”
- Armour: “Miller was a lifelong baseball fan. I think he definitely got a kick out of getting this job. But one thing he convinced the players of, which ran counter to what the owners had been telling them for a long time, is that they were the game. He preached that his whole career. ‘You are the game. You’re the reason why people come to the game.’ And some of the players, like Joe Torre, later talked about the fact that ‘I was always taught by my teams that I was interchangeable. I had no stake in this situation. The owners were the game, and we were lucky to play.’ The owners would tell this to the press, and a lot of the public, frankly, believed that you’re damn lucky to have this job. Tim McCarver said, ‘I just assumed these people were going to take care of me. And I learned later, the hard way, that they weren’t going to take care of me. I had to take care of myself and the players.’ It definitely created this ‘rah, rah’ thing among the players that, ‘Yeah, it’s us. That’s the game.’ And I think that made them really stick together in the tough times that were ahead.”
On public misconceptions about revenue sharing and team finances
- Frankel: “I don’t know if misunderstood is the right word, but fans and the general public maybe just don’t know as much about … the financial support that exists for all 30 clubs in the system right now, but in particular (for) smaller market, lower revenue clubs. I’ll break that down three ways. One is national revenue — that’s revenue generated by MLB and distributed equally to the 30 clubs. That includes a lot of things, but the main thing it includes is national TV dollars, ESPN, Fox. … That’s billions of dollars brought in and distributed equally to all 30 clubs. What this practically means is that the World Series winner each year gets the same cut of postseason TV dollars as the team that finishes last in the standings. … Second, we have a collectively bargained system of revenue sharing that transfers every year hundreds of millions of dollars from higher revenue teams — Dodgers, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, a few examples — to lower revenue teams. We’re in Cleveland, Cleveland is one of those teams. But other examples, Tampa, Miami, Pittsburgh (are) all receiving collectively hundreds of millions of dollars. And then the third example is luxury tax proceeds. We have a system right now where higher payroll teams are taxed and half of it is distributed again to lower revenue teams. So we have systems in place right now that provide significant support for all teams in all markets, but particularly for lower revenue teams. In this round of negotiations, we’re essentially proposing to enhance how revenue sharing works, to provide in the case of revenue sharing more support for some of these lower revenue teams, but make sure that revenue shows up back on the field.”
On attributes that makes for a successful player representative
- Frankel: “I can start by saying it doesn’t really matter what I or anyone who works at the players association wants in a rep. It exclusively matters what other players want in their reps. The reps are elected by their teammates. That being said, there are some core qualities and characteristics we see amongst most of our player reps and executive subcommittee members. … Communication and education are the most important things. Our reps tend to be very good at soliciting feedback from their clubhouses and then providing the information we give them and educating their teammates. I think a lot of the guys are well educated and understand the history of the union, understand the stuff we’re talking about today, understand what players before them fought for, and what essentially gave them the rights they have now. I guess the last thing I’ll say is they understand the responsibility. It’s a huge responsibility. These guys have a day job. Sitting in bargaining meetings listening to lawyers blab for two hours isn’t always the most fun, but they do it. They’re educated, they keep their teammates educated, and they understand what they’re doing now is going to be important, not just for them, but essentially generations of players to come after them.”
For more coverage of SABR 54, visit SABR.org/convention.
Originally published: August 17, 2026. Last Updated: August 12, 2026.