He changed the game. This is why Curt Flood belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

If you ask me, Bowie Kuhn and Bud Selig in the Baseball Hall of Fame is far more repulsive than Donald Trump being president.

Long read: "Major league baseball has a long but little-known history of rebels, reformers, and radicals."

In the late, great Jim Bouton's seminal Ball Four, he observes that the famously eccentric (and highly talented) genius/pitcher Mike Marshall once authored a university term paper titled "Baseball Is An Ass."

Marshall's paper would have been written during the mid-1960s, just before Curt Flood challenged the reserve clause -- and as the late Marvin Miller took the reins of the players union.

Quite simply, Miller belongs in the upper tier of most transformational figures in the history of baseball. Only this year did Miller gain admittance to the Hall of Fame, primarily because of the owners' resentment of a man who enabled them to garner unprecedented wealth by first forcing them to share some of it with the men on the field who made it all possible.

Flood belongs, too. Thanks to IAmHoosier for the link.

Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, Curt Flood mailed a letter that changed baseball history, by Derrick Goold (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Baseball’s declaration of independence, as brief and blunt as it has proven impactful, was sent to the commissioner’s office on Christmas Eve, 50 years ago, and it had St. Louis as the return address.

The brick building with its six white Ionic columns still sits at 8007 Clayton Road, and behind its “For Lease” sign is The Creative Services Building, home to a company that specializes in promotional products to help companies establish their brand, create awards for employees, or fashion gifts for anniversaries. On Dec. 24, 1969, Curt Flood & Assoc. Inc. and Curt Flood Studios resided there, and under its letterhead and that date the former Cardinals outfielder typed a letter that changed baseball history.

“After twelve years in the Major Leagues,” Flood’s letter began, “I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes.”

Flood’s rejection of a trade to the Phillies ignited the labor relations revolution that cost him his career. Between addressing commissioner Bowie Kuhn and signing his name, in an economical 127 words, Flood launched what would help create this winter’s billion-dollar free agent market ...

A wrong, finally righted: Marvin Miller has been voted into baseball's hall of fame.

It's about damn time.

Here is the NAC post of November 27, 2012. I was mistaken; it took another six years for the honor to at last arrive.

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Marvin Miller, RIP.

Next year, Marvin Miller again will be eligible for the Hall of Fame.

I suspect he'll get the nod, because the very same detestable Seligites who kept Miller out while he was living will find it sufficiently sophomoric to give in to inevitable enshrinement following his death.

Marvin Miller, The Man Who Reinvented Baseball, by Keith Olbermann (Baseball Nerd)

... In that he utterly reshaped the way the game was played on the field, Babe Ruth probably reigns supreme on the list of those who changed baseball most. In that they reshaped its color (and our nation’s attitude – and laws), Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson probably share second place. But only they can even be considered above Marvin Miller as men who had greater influence on the history of baseball.

Late note: Only after posting this did I see Charles P. Pierce's piece about Marvin Miller at Esquire, and his sentiments parallel mine:

He is not in the Baseball Hall Of Fame because the voting process is completely corrupt and needs to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch. (My prediction is that they will vote him in posthumously, just to be nasty about it, because Miller already told them not to bother.)

Pierce gets the last word: "(Miller) had a positive genius for making all the right enemies."

Another day-late note: There's a great interview with Miller at The Nation.

Why is Marvin Miller not a member of the baseball Hall of Fame?

In Jim Bouton's seminal Ball Four, he observes that the famously eccentric (and highly talented) genius/pitcher Mike Marshall once authored a university term paper titled "Baseball Is An Ass."

Marshall's paper would have been written during the mid-1960s, just before Curt Flood challenged the reserve clause -- and as the late Marvin Miller took the reins of the players union.

Quite simply, Miller belongs in the upper tier of most transformative figures in the history of baseball. Naturally, he isn't in the Hall of Fame, primarily because of the owners' resentment of a man who enabled them to garner unprecedented wealth by first forcing them to share some of it with the men on the field who made it all possible.

I've written about this several times, and it still gripes my cookies.

Baseball Hall of Fame as corrupted banana republic: Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and (not) Marvin Miller.

Baseball. I love it, bit it's still an ass.

Baseball Union Chief Marvin Miller Awaits His Due, by Richard Sandomir (New York Times)

 ... But if (Curt) Flood, a center fielder, merited being honored for sacrificing his career for the labor rights that he believed all players deserved, the next logical question is: Why is Marvin Miller, the union chief who transformed the baseball players’ union into a fierce labor force, not a member of the Hall? Miller, who died in 2012, has been rejected by various veterans committees an absurd six times — five during his lifetime and the sixth in 2013 when his candidacy was spurned by at least 10 of the 16 voters who elected Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa and Joe Torre.

Olbermann: "Close the Hall of Fame and Start Over."

No further comment necessary.

Slick Leonard is a Hall of Famer, and the ABA was the real thing.

It is noteworthy that in Kelly Dwyer's homage to Slick Leonard, he establishes American Basketball Association context with a reference to Terry Pluto's Loose Balls, one of my favorite sports books ever.

For those of us who grew up with the rivalry between Leonard's Indiana Pacers and the nearby Kentucky Colonels, no introduction is necessary.

The Indy Star covers Leonard's Hall of Fame induction.

Slick Leonard is a Hall of Famer, by Kelly Dwyer (Ball Don't Lie)

It shouldn’t have to take a purchase of a book, or a move to his home state, to make you aware of the existence of one Bobby “Slick” Leonard, but sometimes you’re lucky enough to have the introduction forced upon you.

If you’ve read Terry Pluto’s “Loose Balls ,” there’s no doubt that the aside about the former Indiana Pacers coach captured your fascination. The images of the former NBA coaching washout that used to dribble the ball up and down the train tracks as an Indianan youth in years prior to downing “a few dozen beers” with players before putting them through the literal paces in practice the next day, screaming and yelling and eventually winning them over. Tilting at big man Mel Daniels while drawing a chalk line some three feet from the goal and telling him never to shoot outside of it. Railing at his players for calling each other racial slurs while still allowing them to (literally) bring western-style guns and holsters into the locker room to play cowboys and Indians. Making it mandatory that his players get together for a drink after the game, whether the tipple was “apple juice” or something stronger.

Also, winning those three ABA championships, the most in league history.

Baseball Hall of Fame as corrupted banana republic: Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth and (not) Marvin Miller.

I stand as one with Keith Olbermann on this topic.

Nine to Know: Remembering Marvin Miller, at Billy-Ball

Marvin Miller fails in 6th try for Hall of Fame, by Ronald Blum

Column: Miller will make Hall and have last laugh, by Jim Litke

The baseball fans doth protest too much, methinks, and yet ...

When you've almost entirely lost interest in the perennial baseball Hall of Fame routine well before the current "who gets kept out" controversy, it's tough being a baseball history nut, because as much as it annoys me, I still do care about it in some strange way even when I say I don't. That's frustrating.

The Hall held its election, and yesterday it was revealed that no one won. I read three solid explications, two before the fact and one after. As usual, Keith Olbermann is right on target, and he gives some love to my baseball writer hero, former pitcher Jim Bouton.

Nobody Elected to HOF: We Deserve It, at Baseball Nerd

 ... To his eternal credit (in 1998), the author and former pitcher Jim Bouton not only disagreed, but got it exactly right. Some day, he says in the interview, baseball will have to reckon with years and years of records that will be artificially inflated, distorted beyond all measure, by the effects of a drug that lets you keep working out when the guys next to you – or before you, chronologically – have to drop the barbell. It was Bouton, after all, who had written in the eternal Ball Four that if a pitcher could take a pill that guaranteed him a) 20 wins and b) that he’d die five years sooner, he would’ve swallowed it before you finished that “b)” part ...

... The path to Steroid Hell was indeed paved with good intentions. And Jim Bouton’s pills. And the drugs that he didn’t know the name of that the guy told me about 26 years ago that they also gave the East German Women Swimmers. And the stuff we saw with our lying eyes and just pretended wasn’t real.

Bill Pennington focuses on the the many creative forms of aberrant behavior previously tolerated by voters.

Hall of Fame Has Always Made Room for Infamy, at the New York Times

... Players linked to steroid use have been resoundingly rejected by Hall of Fame voters in recent years, shunned as synthetically enhanced frauds. But drawing an integrity line in the sand is a tenuous stance at a Hall of Fame with a membership that already includes multiple virulent racists, drunks, cheats, brawlers, drug users and at least one acknowledged sex addict.

In the spirit of Groucho Marx, who refused to join any club that would have him as a member, would not baseball’s 77-year-old gallery of rogues be the perfect fit for (Barry) Bonds and (Roger) Clemens?

In the process, he digs up a classic baseball boozer anecdote.

Casey Stengel (class of 1966) once called right fielder Paul Waner (class of 1952) a graceful player. Why?

“Because,” Stengel said, “he could slide into second base without breaking the bottle in his hip pocket.”

But Jayson Stark's viewpoint comes closest to mirroring my own, except that a baseball establishment refusing to recognize Marvin Miller probably can't be trusted to tell the truth about its past, and that's quite regrettable.

Let's face it: Hall of Fame is a mess; Something must be done because current system of electing players isn't working, at ESPN

... Maybe it needs to be a place that does what other great history museums do -- tell the story of a time in history, for better and for worse, wherever it leads. Maybe that's not exactly what we would hope and dream a Hall of Fame should be. Maybe, though, that's what it has to be, because if we try traveling down that other road, we'll find nothing but forks and detours and roadblocks.

But once we have that conversation, at least we'll know how to vote and how to proceed and how to build a Hall of Fame for the 21st century.

If we decide it's a museum, then we need to put all of these men -- the greatest players of their generation -- in the Hall of Fame, and let the sport do what it should have done years ago: Figure out some way to explain what happened back then.

There are many ways to do that. Put the good stuff and the bad stuff right there on the plaques. Erect informational signs that explain the context of that era -- and every era in baseball history. Just be real and honest, and let the truth carry the weight of history in all its permutations.