NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Sports were turned upside down 50 years ago Tuesday by a man who never threw or kicked a ball.<\/p>\n
A lawyer with expertise in labor relations struck down Major League Baseball’s reserve clause, which had bound players to their teams since the 1870s.<\/p>\n
No one could have predicted then that the 65-page decision issued Dec. 23, 1975, by arbitrator Peter Seitz \u2014 who later compared baseball owners to \u201cthe French barons of the 12th century\u201d \u2014 would lead to an upheaval that made thousands of players multimillionaires.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real floodgates opened after that,\u201d former pitcher David Cone said. \u201cPlayers were finally in all walks of life, in all sports, were finally able to see what, hey, what free agency really looks like. There was all the doom and gloom back then from one side that said: ‘This is going to ruin the game. It\u2019s not sustainable.’ And actually, it was just the opposite. It made the game better.”<\/p>\n
Baseball’s average salary was $44,676 at the time of the decision and climbed to about $5 million this year, a 112-fold increase. Outfielder Juan Soto commanded a record $765 million deal with the New York Mets<\/a> last December. <\/p>\n Showing how much players\u2019 earning power was unleashed, that 1975 average would be $260,909 in current dollars, according to the Consumer Price Index. <\/p>\n Seitz’s decision was followed by free agency upheavals in the NFL, NBA, NFL and European soccer.<\/p>\n \u201cThe timeframes largely align to suggest that there were indeed synergies between what was happening on the baseball side and what was happening in other sports,\u201d current baseball players’ association head Tony Clark said.<\/p>\n The push for free agency in baseball<\/p>\n Curt Flood had lost a lawsuit arguing for free agency in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld baseball\u2019s antitrust exemption, ruling it was up to Congress to make any change. <\/p>\n In December 1974, Catfish Hunter was set free on a technicality when Seitz concluded Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley failed to make a $50,000 payment into a long-term annuity fund as specified in the pitcher’s contract. Following a bidding war, Hunter signed a five-year contract with the New York Yankees<\/a> for about $3.2 million.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw this huge contract, it was like reading from another world,\u201d recalled former All-Star pitcher Steve Rogers, among the first beneficiaries of free agency and later a long-time union official. \u201cThe magnitude was just unheard of, the number of dollars that were guaranteed to him. It didn\u2019t take long for us to see that there was a lot of money to be spent in buying talent and then we started seeing: My talent is worth a lot.”<\/p>\n Union head Marvin Miller and general counsel Dick Moss had in 1970 negotiated the first provision for grievances to be decided by an outside arbitrator, and they wanted a case to test the provision in each contract that gave the team the right to renew it for an additional year in perpetuity.<\/p>\n