[ls7plus]

I think some of you took my admittedly slanted sense of humor a bit too seriously. However, I certainly will not retreat from the position that Miller's "contribution" to the game was largely negative. There are essentially three groups that matter when it comes to any professional sport: (1) the owners; (2) the fans; and (3) the players. Miller's "work" was irrefutably adverse to the financial interests of the first two, and only arguably beneficial to the third. I would argue that the fans are the most important of the three, as without them, there simply is no professional game (I once asked Lem Barney, a personal friend of mine, how many HOF'ers there would be without the fans. To his credit, he got the answer absolutely correct: "none"). Of the three groups, only the owners and fans are really here to stay for any significant period, as the average player's career is something on the order of 3-5 years. Most of them are quite similar to the extras in movies like "Spartacus," or "Ben Hur"--essential to the production, yes, but a lot like widgets in the sense that they are to a large degree interchangeable. I would argue that it makes little sense to compensate them to the degree that is currently being done, when each and every one of them would rather clearly play for $200,000 or less per year (virtually none of them have any occupational alternatives that would allow them to earn anywhere close to that). My conclusion is that Miller's union has therefore produced a higher level of salaries than their skills really merit, i.e., what they could earn on a truly open market (and to have such a market, all of them, as Charley Finley originally suggested, would have to be made free agents every year--the limitations on free agency from year to year simply act to keep the supply down, and prices high). It is also an irrefutable matter of economic law that when a group organizes to exert upward pressure upon wages and succeeds to the point where such compensation is significantly higher than the skills brought to the market could merit in one that is truly free and open, then someone has to subsidize that rate of compensation. In the private sector, it is the consumer. In the public sector, it is the taxpayer.

Most of these guys are simply here today and gone tomorrow, never leaving any real lasting impression on the game, with a few obvious exceptions. It is simply my personal opinion that by so limiting the supply of free agents on a yearly basis, salaries are being kept substantially higher than the average player is truly worth. That situation has directly contributed to the use of PED's in the game by making it worth taking the risk of exposure from a financial standpoint to cheat (after all, who really cares if you're caught, so long as you've got 30 million dollars or so in your pocket?). Can anyone say "Balco East?"

Thus, in conclusion, while Miller is indeed truly famous, I would hardly consider him worthy of any serious consideration for the hall of fame.

Sorry if I offended anyone by my earlier post, which was meant only as a point of emphasis, rather than a moral commentary on Mr. Miller.

Thanks for listening, and best wishes to all members.

Larry