Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to the Players Association Stitch by Stitch podcast where we talk to current and former players about union history, baseball and the bond that players share across generations.
[00:00:18] Speaker C: Man, that would have to get the most valuable player vote from me on the moon. Steve Rogers. If you can beat Steve Carlton twice
[00:00:25] Speaker D: in a short series, you have really done your work.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: It's over a soft line drive to Cromartie. The Expos advance to the championship series.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Our guest this episode is Steve Rogers, a five time All Star who spent his entire 13 year career with the Montreal Expos. Steve was a true workhorse on the mound, as evidenced by his 301innings pitched in 1977. That total placed him right behind Phil Negro and and Jim Palmer and just ahead of a couple guys named Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton. He was also a respected player leader and a key advisor to Marvin Miller during a time of rapid change for the union and the game.
[00:01:12] Speaker D: Marvin, I have no idea about whether this was the actual fact or not, but he said in our bylaws, if there are two ties, you flip a coin. I don't know that it was in there. I don't know. But I flipped a coin and I deferred to Tommy to call it. I think he called heads and it was tails and I became the National
[00:01:31] Speaker B: League pension rep. Steve began working full time for the Players association in the late 1990s and continues to contribute with his historical perspective and encyclopedic knowledge of the union's pension and benefit plans. His passion for the game and the cause of players burns just as brightly today as it did when he threw his first big league pitch with the expos in 1973.
[00:02:00] Speaker E: Steve Rogers, welcome to Stitch by Stitch.
[00:02:04] Speaker D: It's good to be here. Been a long time coming. We've been talking about it, but I'm really excited to have my opportunity to talk about things.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:12] Speaker E: So we're going to talk to you a lot about union history, but Steve Rogers personal history.
Kind of an interesting backstory. You grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri, the state capital.
Father was a dentist, one of six kids.
Were you in love with baseball at an early age?
[00:02:32] Speaker D: I'll have to say that like every kid, you spent Saturday mornings doing basically this routine throughout the summer months.
You woke up with the sun, you went down and you got a bowl of cereal and then you were out the door with your glove and your bat and if you had a ball or two ball or whatever, and you'd go over to the vacant lot. No house had been built on it yet. And so Therefore, that was our baseball field. And you waited for somebody to show up so that you could hit fly balls to them and they could try and hit the bat so that they. In other words, it started at dawn and usually there were more than one mother screaming at the top of their lungs to get in as it got dark and it was time to eat something.
[00:03:22] Speaker E: Were you a Cardinals fan?
[00:03:24] Speaker D: Yep. That's Cardinal territory. But I had two favorite teams. My favorite National League team was the Cardinals, no doubt about it. But my favorite American League team and favorite team overall was the New York Yankees. Mickey Mantle certainly was, you know, a living legend at that time. And there was only one game a week and it was on set Saturday. And 75% of the time the Yankees were going to be playing whoever it was. And since it had to be someone in the American League, it was a rarity that we would see. They might go out and have the Dodgers or the Cardinals might be on that Saturday game of the week, but for the most part, you watched the Yankees play.
[00:04:04] Speaker E: So tell us about a guy named Tom Greenwade.
[00:04:07] Speaker D: Tom Greenweight. Tom Greenway was a well known scout for the Yankees and in that region. And he had moved back in a permanent basis, a little town outside of Springfield.
And Springfield wasn't a huge city, but it was a city of a hundred thousand back in those days.
And he owned a bank. He was the principal owner of a bank and was the president of the bank. But he also still scouted and he came to many of our high school games.
We used to have high school games that would have six or eight organizations represented there. And Tom Greenway was the king of all of those scouts that were there and they deferred to him and also relied upon him for insights.
And he decided that.
Well, he took up conversation with my dad and my dad was very intrigued by the fact that he had taken an interest in me. And he said, my dad said, you know, he's just not ready. And so Mr. Greenway said, well, that may be, that may be right, but we're still going to draft him. And so Tom Greenway did draft me. The Yankees drafted me in the 60th round. That was their last round, so I was their last pick. He told my dad, I just wanted him to know that we think he's got what it takes and we want to show him that we have interest.
Well, and dad also said, you know, he's not going to sign, he's not ready. And if I'd gone to Blue Eye West Virginia with a Bus ticket and an apple. That would have been my bonus.
It would have been a catastrophe because I was not ready. And so he said he owed a favor to the coach who was starting the program at the University of Tulsa. I do not know what the favor was for. I don't know exactly how it ended up being that I was the payment of that favor. I don't know.
But he recommended me and through a long process, yeah, it took exactly two weeks and school was about to start.
And so I was very fortunate. I got a scholarship to the University of Tulsa.
[00:06:25] Speaker E: Are you the only guy in baseball history with a degree in petroleum engineering?
[00:06:31] Speaker D: Well, Jerry Tabb had. Jerry Tabb had got about two years in the big leagues and with Oakland. He was their first round draft choice and he got a petroleum engineering degree. He was a freshman when I was a senior. So I do know that there are two of us that, that played Howard Twilley in football engineering degree. So anyway, we, we got a couple, three of us.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: So if you hadn't played baseball, you
[00:06:57] Speaker E: would have been big in the oil world?
[00:06:59] Speaker D: I'm not sure about big in the oil world. There were a lot of bumper stickers after the crash back in the 70s, and they said, please give me one more oil boom. I promise I won't mess this one up.
So, yeah, it was some dynamic times. And no, I did not take part in any of it.
However, I did get just smart enough with that degree to lose $250,000 investing in oil.
[00:07:32] Speaker E: Well, you made it back though, somehow.
[00:07:34] Speaker D: Yeah, somewhere along the line, I guess. Maybe I did, I don't know.
[00:07:37] Speaker E: But anyway, so you sign with the Expos, you get called to the big leagues. Your first big league win was over Steve Carlton, right? Yeah, that was a pretty auspicious start.
[00:07:49] Speaker D: Well, and that was the first start after the All Star break. I came up to pitch and I pitched the Sunday before the all star game in 73 because the scheduling was such that they needed, they needed that spot starter in there. And so they called me up from, from aaa and it started out a little rough. Bases were loaded, no outs in the first inning, and I, you know, eventually I got a ground ball double play, they scored a run and then I got out and they ended up coming out two to two. So it was. Wasn't looking real great early on.
[00:08:26] Speaker E: So you spent your entire 13 year career in Montreal? You don't see that much nowadays, I mean, especially since free agency. And did you consider yourself fortunate at the time to, to do that? What did it mean? To you to play in that place. And you actually correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think you're in the Canadian Sports hall of Fame, Baseball hall of Fame and the Missouri Sports hall of Fame. Correct?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:58] Speaker E: So Montreal was like a second home to you?
[00:09:01] Speaker D: Yeah, Montreal was a second home to me and I grew up there.
I grew up in the game. While playing for the Expos, you can have a skill set and I had a chance to pitch in two college World Series. So I pitched in front of, of, you know, big crowds, very meaningful games, you know, that were being played. But it really doesn't compare with what you have to. How you have to grow up and mature as fast as you can in the major leagues. But it was a real blessing that there was a young team and I was able to grow along with those players in the.
But the fact is, in 1980, I was traded.
I was traded for al Oliver in 1980. I've had this verified by the general manager. And they traded because they wanted a left handed bat. And he had just signed with the Texas Rangers and had played the first year of his three year contract. And they went to talk to him and tell him he had been traded and he said, no, I'm not going to go to Montreal. The taxation, the tax issues were what. He didn't want to go because he was going to lose money. He said, well, Brad Corbett, the general partner, told me when I signed my contract, he shook my hand, said, you will not be traded anywhere you do not want to go.
And he said, I don't want to go. And he said, well, let's go talk to Mr. Corbett. Mr. Corbett stood behind his handshake and said, no. I shook the man's hand and that's it. Otherwise I'd have been in Texas for my best years. But it was, it was one of those things that they really felt they needed. They really needed a left handed bat in the lineup. And eventually we got, we got Oliver over there the next year, but for a handshake.
I'm a Texas Ranger.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Geez.
[00:11:05] Speaker E: Just a couple other things about your playing career.
In 77, I believe, 301innings you pitched.
Nowadays, 200 is a lot.
What was it like back then when you threw over 300?
Just how did you manage that?
Arm maintenance.
Crazy.
[00:11:31] Speaker D: It was, it was crazy. But it was also part of, it was the last part of an era where guys like Fergie Jenkins did it eight times. They threw 300 innings. Yeah, I mean, you know, so. So my one time happened to be at the end of that era.
And, you know, you're looking at, Well, I started 40 games that year, and that would be.
The vast majority of those were on four days rest.
So I would pitch a game, two days later I'd throw a bullpen, and two days later I'd throw, I'd pitch. And so it just became the routine.
You can't throw the ball with the kind of velocity you would want, with that kind of schedule, you're just simply not going to ever fully recover.
So I relied on my sinking fastball. And in other words, you learn how to manage that. But I wasn't alone. I mean, that's what was required of pitchers in the number one or two slots in a rotation. I mean, you, you were going to get out there four times. I can remember in 75, we broke camp with eight pitchers.
[00:12:41] Speaker E: Eight on the whole staff, eight on the whole staff.
[00:12:44] Speaker D: And Steve Rinko was number one on the, on our roster and I was number two.
And I think it was 1974.
And it went, Rinko Rogers, off day rain. Rinko Rogers, off day, rain. Rinko Rogers. So we threw this. We started the first six games and I had, I believe I had two complete games and Rinko had a complete game. And we both went into the seventh or eighth. I think the bullpen ended up with like around six innings pitched in the first eight days. Nine, 10 days, I guess, is what it was. So it was just a different era.
[00:13:22] Speaker E: One of the other things that slipped in between the cracks that I didn't realize.
[00:13:26] Speaker D: You gave up.
[00:13:27] Speaker E: Pete Roses, 3010.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:13:29] Speaker D: That put me in the hall of Fame. I went into that game and that would have been in 78. And so I had pitched in the league for two or three years and I had not won a game in Cincinnati. Cause, well, guess what? The Big Red machine occupied Cincinnati and Cincinnati's ballpark, and they were hard to beat anywhere.
So I had it in my mind. I just, I wanted to win the ball game. I.
And he had 2,998. So in the bottom of the first inning, he hits a 1 and 2 sinker, and he hits it right off the plate for a Baltimore chop. I'm waiting for it at the, at the mound and it. And he's crossing, crossing first base when I catch the ball.
Now he's gone one for three off of me in his sleep. So am I going to keep him from getting 3,000?
Highly unlikely.
I got the next eight guys out consecutively, which brought him up with two outs and no one on in the third inning.
And I said, I'm just not going to, I'm going to, I'm not going to mess with this. If he hits a line drive at somebody, okay, well, then, you know, then I'll work about it. But this is the perfect time. If he gets a base hit, it's a runner on and two outs in the inning. So I'm not giving him anything. But if he doesn't okay, well, then fine, I'll, I'll worry about that later. And I ended up throwing a fastball and it was pretty much middle, middle. And he did with it what he does with all pitches right in that area. He hit a rocket right over shortstop for 3,000.
They stopped the game, gave him the ball, did all of that. I ended up winning the game 3 to 2. And I was so happy because that was my first win in Cincinnati against that team, too.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Rose leveling the bat. Roger cites a sign from Carter. The 10 pitch. Swung on, base hit.
Rose with base hit number 3,000 in his major league career as he lines a single elaps all of the Cincinnati Reds players congratulating Rose and historic moment here at Riverfront Stadium.
[00:15:38] Speaker E: So everybody has their, who's in union leadership, has their introductory story about who got them interested or the circumstances at the time. You were a pretty young player in Montreal.
How did you initially get involved with the union?
[00:15:57] Speaker D: Well, again, having an engineering degree coming out of college and you know, they, they mistook, mistook that for being smart. But anyway, I was, I was the alternate in 74. Okay, so Mike Marshall was the player rep, the pitcher and Steve Rinko was the alternate. And then when they traded, Mike Rinko became the player rep and I became the alternate. He was then traded in 76 and I became the player rep.
I had attended some of the meetings because he was not down in spring training yet in the 76 when they spring training lockout after the Messer Smith McNally decision sites decision. So it was one of those things that I had already had a chance to be a participant in some major meetings. And then when Rinko was traded, I then became the rep. And so I attended the executive board meeting that year and at the base of diamond hit, we headed out and they tried to make it someplace nice because we couldn't afford those kinds of vacations. But it was one of those deals that they also then had vacancies. Tom Seaver had stepped down and so the National League pension rep was open.
Bob Bailey had been a teammate of mine. He had been traded and he was attending the executive board meeting. So when they made nominations, somebody nominated Tommy John. And then Bob Bailey said, well, you know, I think he's going to be around for a while. So he nominated me. We had 14 teams, so the first vote was seven to seven.
And I voted for Tommy because, you know, I said, you know, I deferred to the veteran.
And so we tied. And so they held another vote. And I said, well, I really would like to do this. So I voted for myself. And it turned out seven to seven.
So after two. After two tied votes, I don't know. I don't know. And so, Marvin, I have no idea about whether this was the actual fact or not, but he said in our bylaws, if there are two ties, you flip a coin. Whether I don't know that it was in there, I don't know. But he flipped a coin, and I deferred to Tommy to call it. I think he called heads and I. And it was tails. And I became the National League pension rep on a coin toss, which then put me on the first negotiating subcommittee, which basically started the ball rolling. And I'm sitting here talking to you like I'm an expert on stuff.
[00:18:43] Speaker E: So I don't know what a sophisticated process.
[00:18:45] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. I'm telling you, it comes all the way down to a coin toss.
[00:18:49] Speaker E: A coin toss, yeah. So you were involved in the pension. You were the pension rep.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:54] Speaker E: It seems to me like being the pension rep is a.
That's a grind. Like, you really have to educate yourself. There's a lot of, you know, reading, studying, learning about the pension. What do you recall about your learning curve doing that?
[00:19:09] Speaker D: Well, the one thing about it is that you hire outside professionals to give you counsel on all of those things, that you're not educated on investments and all of the stuff that goes into having a successful funding for a pension.
And I found that trying to understand and learn the information they gave to us to help us make decisions, certainly they would have a recommendation. So coming out of that, you have their recommendation, then you have the background information, and you just try and make the two fit.
And it's a process and you ask questions. And it was one of those processes that by simply being given all of that information quarterly, and I think our first year, the entire contribution to fund the pension was right at $2 million.
I mean, you know, again, we get 160 million to fund the pension benefits.
At that time, we had 50 million in the fixed, 50 million in the variable. We had 100 million total, and it's now just under 6.5 billion.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:20:37] Speaker D: So it, you know, again, it's.
To have been part of that, to have been entrusted with, you know, with understanding and making the best decisions that. That we, as a committee could make has been one of the highlights of my baseball career, is having had that opportunity and still continuing in that role as a.
As a second alternate. And Chris Capuano is the second alternative.
Mike Myers is the second alternate. So in other words, we've got guys that have played, that have been involved with the pension for years, that are then in the role of being voters on all the decisions.
[00:21:19] Speaker E: We've talked to a lot of people in this series about Marvin Miller.
You probably spent as many hours with Marvin as about, what, 98% of players.
What was the dynamic like? Who were the other voices that you felt like were in the trenches with you? And what was that dynamic like between you guys as players?
[00:21:47] Speaker D: The negotiating process was really developing in those early years, and in 76, we really didn't have a formalized negotiating committee, a subcommittee. You know, it was Marvin and it was Dick that were in there negotiating. And we had some senior guys, you know, that were in that when they could, they would make it to a negotiating session. But there was no real systematic inclusion of current players.
And what came out of it is going into 1980 and that collective bargaining round, they saw the impact. Marvin and Dick saw the impact of having players in the room on the other side.
Because when there were no players in there, they would talk as if the players had absolutely no brains whatsoever.
[00:22:43] Speaker E: The owners would.
[00:22:44] Speaker D: The owners would. And, you know, and they said the only way to stop that, the only way to stop is to get players in there. They still did it, but at least they got an immediate reaction from across the table. So it was a process that it had its fits and starts. But I'll never forget Marvin said, you know, I think I finally reached a point because in the 1981 negotiations and then in the strike, early in the strike, he was touted by the owners or characterized by the owners as being a Svengali who have hypnotized all these players. And these players are just following him around like, yes, tell us what to do. Tell us what to do. And he said, they don't understand the process that we go through to educate the players so that there could be a give and take and a conversation. And he said, so I think it's about time that I stepped out.
And we kind of went, what do you mean, stepped Out He's. Cause we were in. You know, we were in negotiations. And he said, no, Bob, I think you should be the lead negotiator.
[00:23:55] Speaker E: Bob Boone.
[00:23:56] Speaker D: Bob Boone. And I'm going to go in, I'm going to sit down, and I'm going to say, well, you guys feel that I'm. To the other side of the table. You feel that I'm the problem. Okay, Bob Jarts and walked out. And they all went.
They could now no longer blame Marvin to be the middleman who's interfering with this. If it was just us talking to the players, we could get something done in a day. We basically were a team of four guys in there with Bob and Desensis and Belanger, Mark Belanger and I.
And, you know, we had. We had voices for. You were talking about Rusty Staub would be. Would be in there when he could be. Phil Garner, God rest his soul, he would be in there when he could be.
We had Kent Covey later on. Maybe not as much in that year, but the honest truth is we had guys that participated.
And all of a sudden, when they would come up with some proposal or some position on something that just didn't make sense in the reality of the situation, you know, they would make a statement about what players want. And we go, you know, really, you know what we want. And so all of a sudden, the professionalism that Marvin brought to the process, they could see that, no, the players knew what we were talking about, and Marvin was shepherding that entire process.
And about a week later, I think Marvin said to us in the. In the caucus room, well, what do you think is time for me to come back?
He said, you'll make. You'll make a lot of people happy on the other side.
[00:25:48] Speaker E: So they actually wanted them back. Yeah, they want dealing with you guys,
[00:25:52] Speaker D: because what he did was take the process and make it functional. And we didn't care about process. We were the player, you know, we were.
So anyway, we did care about process, but we weren't good at it.
[00:26:06] Speaker E: Well, as a pitcher, you're standing on the mound, you have an opponent, you're driven, you're, you know, forward, you're. You're a man of action.
[00:26:16] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:26:17] Speaker E: And these negotiations, there's a lot of dancing around and talking, and you don't seem like the kind of guy who would have much patience for that.
[00:26:27] Speaker D: Well, it's not what we did. To your point, it's not what we did. And yet, as much as it was very functional in the negotiating room, it was more functional in the caucus room, in putting together the thought processes that. That then would be delivered mostly by Marvin. But, you know, so you had the combination where you just walked out of the negotiating room. You've seen or heard some things that you go, are they really thinking that? And then you come back in the caucus room and you say, okay, well, here's how we have to approach this. And we would come up with a plan.
And certainly it was guided by Marvin and Dick, as it should be. They were. They were the best of the best. And yet I think that those times where it was players only in there, the owners negotiating group also then had to take it as an absolute fact that we also knew a lot about what was going on here. We may not be as well versed in how the process should go and be more productive, but we understood the issues.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: We have accomplished nothing.
The strike is on. The reports we've been getting indicate that a substantial number of the players have already left for home. We didn't want to strike, but we just have no alternative. We may not be the skilled negotiators of those sitting across the table, but we have some very good ideas about some things that should take place in our business.
[00:28:02] Speaker E: Steve, we did talk briefly about the dynamic between players and owners, and sometimes they might talk in a way that might get you a bit riled.
I go back to Lords of the Realm quite a bit on this thing, and there was apparently a bit of a clash between you and Chubb Feeney.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:22] Speaker E: Can you recall that? It was pretty funny.
[00:28:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:26] Speaker E: He was the Giants owner, I think. Right.
[00:28:29] Speaker D: Chubby was the National League president.
[00:28:32] Speaker E: Okay, he was the president. Yeah.
[00:28:34] Speaker D: Yeah. So it was back in the day. So he's smoking his cigar in the room down there in Washington, D.C.
and we had reached a roadblock about halfway through that. And, you know, it was getting a little heated. We're talking about things. Talking about how long you had to wait until you got to. I think their first proposal was 10 years before you could be a free agent. I mean, come on. So they're taught.
[00:29:01] Speaker E: And was this in 76, 77. When was this?
[00:29:05] Speaker D: No, no, this was. This was in 80.
[00:29:09] Speaker E: This was in 81.
[00:29:10] Speaker D: This was.
[00:29:11] Speaker E: This was the big one.
[00:29:12] Speaker D: Yeah, this was the. Yeah, the. The 50 day, 52 day or whatever it was.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:19] Speaker D: So we're. We're in there. I finally said, chub, you think you believe you've got us right where you want us.
And I said, you know, that's fine if you think that's. And I probably used an expletive in there. And I said, but you don't have any idea if you want to shut down the industry for the year. You want to just call it off now? Let's just call it off because you people are not listening.
Well, you know, and he got all puffy and he was all mad and everything like this.
But we had exchanges like that all across there. Because I think what they did is they said if we tell them this is what we need to have or what the situation calls for, they'll just do it.
And I think they just really felt like they could go in and tell us what to do.
And it was frustrating because I don't know how we could demonstrate anymore that we understood exactly what was going on.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: And.
[00:30:21] Speaker D: And know what you just said isn't right. It's not true. And so that was just an hour. We had a couple of different situations, but that.
That was mine. And I. You know, again, it's just the frustration level would. Would peak.
We had a situation that probably a day later, maybe, maybe two days later. So later in that week, we were in Washington, D.C.
we had a news blackout, a media blackout. Well, the only way we had to get the information out to our players was through the media. We didn't have 26 teams with a front office with a telex, and they would get an immediate recounting of what had happened at the negotiating.
The players didn't have that. We did. You know, you're right. That's what cell phones, you know, did away with. But we had no way to communicate. So there was radio silence out of Washington, D.C. and we had two or three guys that just simply made comments of frustration about, you know, about the process, about, you know, what the heck's going on.
And immediately, immediately the owner's side of the table took that to be a crack in the union. It wasn't.
It was a crack in no information being gotten out. And it delayed the resolution of that strike probably a week. But it also taught everybody a lesson that it's not just to be solid, to have your solidarity. You've also got to make sure that you don't say something that someone else can misconstrue. So it really did drive home a point about how to maintain that solidarity.
[00:32:14] Speaker E: There was also a story about no progress being made and Rusty Staub coming in with a bunch of New York Times crossword puzzles for guys to play with who said, hey, if we're going to be sitting here doing nothing, we might as well be productive. Were you There for that. Do you remember?
[00:32:32] Speaker D: Yeah, I can remember.
I can remember.
Rusty was very instrumental. Yeah. He was going.
Let's just demonstrate the point that this is a stalling tactic or we're getting nothing accomplished. Yeah.
[00:32:47] Speaker E: Can you take us back to the strike of 1981 and the circumstances, the argument? I believe it was over free agent compensation primarily.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: But set the stage for that.
[00:33:02] Speaker E: And just walk us through how that unfolded. You missed 50 games.
Just go back in time.
[00:33:10] Speaker D: I know that when the quarterbacks club in the NFL created that first big crack in their union, they undermined their free agency through the Rozelle rule, which was compensation for free agents signing. If you met certain criteria as to your level of productivity and you were a free agent and you were signed by another team, they could get up to two starting players for you. Well, I'm sorry, that's just a trade.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: So basically it just dilutes free agency.
[00:33:46] Speaker D: Well, just. It basically. Well, there was negates. Yeah, there is no free agency. It's just a trade.
And as soon as they did that, all of the big contracts and all the guarantees, they just went away and with no leverage. So within a space of just a few years, like two or three years, then our collective bargaining came up. Well, if the NFL's got it, then the major league owners wanted it because it must be good. And they also saw what it did to free agency.
It was one of those situations that we knew it was coming. But they hired a chief negotiator, Ray Grebe, out of General Electric, and he had broken the union in General Electric or had been.
I don't know.
That's what he touted as having been his accomplishment. And with that background, we knew they were coming after us. And we were a little bit concerned because somehow they got it in their mind that if they settled on every single other negotiation point and only compensation for free agents was on the table, that there's no way we would sustain any kind of work stoppage or anything. We wouldn't go out for just one thing because, you know. And so we settled everything in 1980, except for this one issue.
And for the life of me, it allowed every single player to almost immediately know every single thing about what we were negotiating over. Cause there was only one thing, and you knew all the elements. So everybody. And everybody could see. Exactly. Because it was demonstrated in football already.
What, how it suppressed the salaries, how it did all of the things that we were working hard to put in place with free agency.
So with that as a backdrop, it became Evident that that's where it's really a single issue, a single item. And it was very straightforward.
I think when it was all said and done, Marvin and Lee McPhail, there have been so many conversations it had been brought up and digested, chewed on and digested. And I think it probably took them an hour in a back room on the back of an envelope to put together the structure of the whole thing. And yeah, the individual things had to be, had to be nailed down, but the framework was done in very quick order. And it is very close to what we got today is six years for free agency and demanding a trade at five years that was more coming out of where we had been and a trade, some guys would just want to trade and it wasn't utilized very often. It was leveraged, but it wasn't acted upon all that often demand to trade because then you couldn't become a free agent for six years. So it was one of those deals where eventually it, it, it worked its way out of the system.
[00:37:09] Speaker E: The players set a strike date. Correct. For I think it was, I'm reading May 29th. They moved it to June 12th.
You went out on strike and then for the next 50 days you're on strike over this free agent compensation issue, which is trying to preserve free agency in its purest form, I guess.
[00:37:31] Speaker D: Right.
[00:37:32] Speaker E: When you attach compensation, too much compensation, free agency is essentially meaningless.
[00:37:38] Speaker D: And it was direct compensation, right? Yeah. In other words, it's just simply a trade.
And so whatever.
If there were two starters that would come over, if you signed that quarterback and it would go directly to the team who lost the quarterback, then what you got is the value of that quarterback has been diminished by the value of those two players.
Very straightforward.
And so it was really very simple. And it was the first.
If they could drive that stake in that was the first, you know, that was the first stake that would eventually kill the whole deal.
[00:38:26] Speaker E: What was that experience like for you in a 50 day strike in the middle of the season with communication not being like anyone who's born in the last how many years would say, well, we have cell phones.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: You have this.
[00:38:41] Speaker E: You didn't have cell phones, you didn't have the Internet.
[00:38:45] Speaker D: We had phone, we, we had some calls we would, would make and try and get hold of as as many. And then they would make the call. But you know, all you have to do is get a story, get a story or a set of facts and repeat it three times on phone trees and you're gonna come up with something entirely different.
[00:39:05] Speaker E: Telephone game.
[00:39:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:07] Speaker D: So, so, you know, with that, with that in mind, it was personally, I was in the negotiating room in another city.
28 out of those 50 days, I wasn't home.
I mean, I, you know, and so, you know, the other guys that went home, they were with their kids and they were doing whatever they were doing. And you know, maybe they played catch, maybe they didn't play catch, I don't know. But the, the end result is I just, I didn't have.
And nobody on the negotiating committee had the ability to do any consistent type of working out.
And working out in a regimen for strength and conditioning was in its infant stages. It was just starting to become a thing.
And so, I mean, I was on a plane or in a negotiating room, you know, enough to where I didn't feel like anything was 50 days. It was just, it was a long, drawn out process for the guys that were traveling.
[00:40:13] Speaker E: I know obviously the strike ended and you came back in August. But what was the ultimate resolution to the compensation issue?
[00:40:23] Speaker D: What we were able to do is say, look, if you think you need compensation, then we're going to create a pool of. You can protect up to 23 players every organization. You put a pool of two players, two starters in the, in this pool. And if a team loses a free agent of this caliber or above, whatever those that measurement consisted of, then the team that lost that player can go to the pool and choose a player.
Well, the Mets didn't protect Tom Seaver and year number one, Cincinnati lost. Who did they lose?
I don't remember who, but the, but then they said, oh, well, okay, then we have to choose somebody. We'll choose Thomas Seaver and the Mets go, what?
[00:41:29] Speaker E: You can't.
[00:41:29] Speaker D: We didn't, we didn't sign your free that nobody's in the pool. You didn't protect him. And so it never was about compensation. It was about direct compensation. So we offered them what they said they wanted. That was compensation. It's not what they wanted. They wanted direct compensation just to bring
[00:41:51] Speaker B: us to the present.
[00:41:54] Speaker E: 1999, I think was when you came to work for the union full time. Michael Wiener actually help facilitate that.
What was your relationship like with Michael and how would you like people to remember him? And what did he do for you in terms of getting you back involved in the union?
[00:42:12] Speaker D: Well, again, I was a full time outside consultant, so again, I wasn't on a full time staff, but I was.
All I did was work on those collusion cases.
We also had the great misfortune of of losing Mark Belanger. Prior to that, I was still finishing off the end of putting all those.
The reports for the guys with less, the lesser service time. And then Mark, you know, had cancer, and he fought it, and it eventually took him. And that's when Don asked Tony Bernizard. He was special assistant along with Mark, and Tony put in good word for me.
And so eventually I worked into replacing.
Well, you can't really replace Belanger because he was at the heart of this organization as it developed and grew, but someone to fill in in office every day. And so Don reached out and asked me if I would consider moving up here and taking the position full time.
And I said, absolutely. And then when he stepped down, you know, it was. Michael was the heir apparent. And not because that just, you know, people, you know, liked his Converse tennis shoes. The fact was, you know, he had displayed the capabilities that Don and Dick Moss earlier. I mean, the dynamics that were there and then some.
He was Michael, okay, But he had all of that and then some.
And when he assumed the executive director's role, I was in the latter stages of doing the collusion cases and things, but it was one of the deals that. That I now was going to be in office every, you know, every day and did the commute up from New Jersey, and Michael would ask of me my opinion and stuff, which, you know, again, it was very much appreciated. But, you know, to be part of that, part of that process was. Was great, Steve.
[00:44:37] Speaker E: Just probably finally, I think, as somebody who's been involved for what, since 1973, over half a century, as a rep or whatever, what would you like young players to know about the growth of the union?
What other players have gone through, what you really would like them to pay attention to at what is a very
[00:45:05] Speaker D: important time right now, certainly as we enter the collective bargaining cycle which is upon us right now. I think the one thing that struck me was as soon as I saw the impact my first spring training, I was locked out.
I go, whoa, that's not right.
And so I had an immediate indication of how it could impact me, okay? Because it's hard sometimes to pick up on what might affect.
It might have on you.
It's hard to pick that up until you get it right there. And it's almost physical. It's upon you. This is how you're being affected.
Okay? So if it's going to affect me to that level, shouldn't I know as much about it as I can?
And I would hope that every single player.
Every single player would say okay, the owners want this and the word of the day is cap.
And, you know, they want to cap my salary.
How could that affect me? Well, it would lower my salary because it's capped. Okay.
It would also, just by the nature, pit me against my teammates because every dollar I get, they don't get and vice versa. So now all of a sudden, it's an entirely different dynamic. And we have always been about, no matter whether you're a Superstar or the 26th man on the team, you are important because it takes all of you in equal measure to create the product that then drives the industry. And, and all of a sudden you would undermine all of that because everybody wouldn't be equal. And just understand, I just would like the players to understand that the more you know about each and every proposal that's raised in collective bargaining, it really is incumbent upon you to understand it to the best of your ability. Ask the questions. Don't just assume, oh, well, they wouldn't be asking for it if it wasn't right. Well, again, that's, you know, we may be asking for something, but there's about 100 asks in there. There's going to be a lot of asks on both sides. And again, you should understand as much of it as you can because it all will affect you very directly and it will affect everybody after you. And it would fly in the face of all those who came before you to just give away the ranch.
So understand there's a responsibility on both sides of you, too. But once you understand the responsibility to yourself, it's easy to apply that to everybody. But as long as you know how it's going to affect you.
[00:48:11] Speaker E: Yeah, no, that's great. The guys in your era are watching all the time, every subsequent negotiation, Right, Everyone.
[00:48:21] Speaker D: Once you go through it, it's ingrained in your soul. And so every time it comes up in the industry, which is a five year cycle now, it used to be every two or three years because we were butting heads so hard, but regardless of the cycle, it comes up periodically and it brings back all that you felt when you were playing and how it affected you. It really does. So also understand you don't want to be the one that 20 years from now you go, oh, my God, we let that one go.
You know, we had it and we let it go. And you don't want to be that guy.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Thank you to Steve Rogers for sharing his memories, his wisdom, and as always, passionate take on the game.
This has been an episode of Stitch by Stitch, connecting players from the past present and future. This episode was written and produced by Jerry Krasnick with research and production support from Pablo Okuriz, Pablo Bowser, Jordan Score, and Eva Amrez. This episode was edited and mixed by Mark Levine with additional video editing from David Hattie and Michael Scribonia. Our supervising producer was Rachel Gross, Emily Kless provided art direction and media strategy, and our executive producers were Roz Guevara and Gretchen Mueller. A Stitch by Stitch podcast is an MLBPA Audio Original.
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