Bowie Kuhn?

The Veterans Committee has enshrined a half dozen executives and managers, and their list contains a surprise.

At last, Bowie Kuhn beat Marvin Miller at something.

The late commissioner was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Monday while Miller was rejected by a revamped Veterans Committee stacked with those he regularly opposed — and beat — in arbitration and bargaining sessions that altered the history of the game.

“Bowie was a close friend and a respected leader who served as commissioner during an important period in history, amid a time of change,” commissioner Bud Selig said, adding: “I was surprised that Marvin Miller did not receive the required support given his important impact on the game.”

Former Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, managers Dick Williams and Billy Southworth and ex-Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss also were elected.

Manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey each missed induction by a single vote.

Dreyfuss helped bring peace between the American and National Leagues by arranging the first World Series in 1903. O’Malley united the East and West Coasts under baseball’s flag when he moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Southworth and Williams won World Series titles.

Kuhn presided over the introduction of night games to the World Series and baseball’s first, tentative steps into national marketing. But the game also changed in ways he fiercely resisted: Free agency, salary arbitration and dozens of other benefits that Miller won for the players as the head of their union.

I just can’t wrap my mind around Bowie Kuhn in Cooperstown. Even as a kid, I could tell he was a joke. This is a pretty fair summary of his tenure as Commissioner:

Despite his frequent, albeit forced, accomodations of player demands, Kuhn was perceived as a tool of the owners and as overmatched by the head of the Players Association, Marvin Miller. Kuhn regularly chided the players for their demands, called them overpaid, and preached of the potential evils of free agency, all stances pleasing to his employers, the owners. But Kuhn’s officious, pompous manner gained him enemies beyond the ranks of the players. His handling of an investigation of Cubs manager Leo Durocher ended in personal, although largely private, embarrassment. Writer Red Smith excoriated Kuhn in many columns, producing such bon mots during the 1981 strike as “this strike wouldn’t have happened if Bowie Kuhn were alive today” and “an empty car pulled up and Bowie Kuhn got out.” Kuhn also feuded with A’s owner Charlie Finley, who referred to Kuhn as a “village idiot” and then apologized for the offense to village idiots. Kuhn vetoed some of Finley’s innovations, and in 1973 he prevented Finley from vindictively placing second baseman Mike Andrews on the DL during the World Series following a costly error. Their biggest clash came when Kuhn voided the sales, and lopsided trades involving cash, of A’s stars Vida Blue, Joe Rudi, and others. The players were going to leave Oakland as free agents to escape Finley’s tyrannical ownership, and Finley was trying to get some value for them. Many owners in the past had sold off their stars; Connie Mack, who had guided the A’s for a half-century, was famous for breaking up his great teams. But Kuhn ruled that Finley’s deals were not “in the best interests of baseball.” Kuhn also suspended Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for a year after he was convicted of perjury and making illegal contributions to the election campaign of Richard Nixon, and suspended Braves owner Ted Turner for tampering.

Kuhn may ultimately be remembered for the spectacular growth of baseball in the 1970s and 1980s, a period that began with expansion in 1969, the same year Kuhn became Commissioner. Attendance in 1980 was more than triple what it had been in 1968, and television revenue was up more than $ 10 million dollars in the same period. But the eagerness of baseball to bow to the demands of network TV resulted in concessions criticized by purists. The most notable of these concessions was night baseball during the World Series. The first such game, in 1971, found Kuhn attending bareheaded and coatless despite the cold weather, with cameras frequently focusing on him in an attempt to deny the effects of the temperature.

It’s even more galling to me to see Marvin Miller get screwed like this.

The veterans panel has been changed twice since 2001, when charges of cronyism followed the election of glove man Bill Mazeroski. The original 15-member panel was expanded to include every living member of the Hall, but that group failed to elect anyone in three tries.

It was replaced by three separate panels — one for players, one for managers and umpires and one for executives and pioneers, leaving Miller’s fortunes largely in the hands of the same group he once fought in collective bargaining and the courts.

He did not come close, receiving only three of 12 possible votes. Under the previous system, Miller received 63 percent of the votes earlier this year while Kuhn got 17 percent .

I’ll give Beelzebud Selig credit for championing Miller’s candidacy. Marvin Miller was worth a dozen Bowie Kuhns, easy. Far as I’m concerned, as long as Kuhn is in and Miller is out, the Hall is terribly out of balance. Thanks to David Pinto for the link. AOL Fanhouse and King Kaufman have more.

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