If I were a professional athlete, no matter the sport, here's what I would do today. I would take out my checkbook and I'd write a check (and make it big one) to my favorite charity in honor of Marvin Miller, who died today at age 95. For it was Miller, that brilliant, hard union leader who brought power to the Baseball Players Association in 1966. In the process, he took sports from the feudal era when players served at the whim of owners to a time of good contracts and free agency. I'm not surprised that Marvin Miller lived as long as he did because he was as tenacious and tough as they come. The one spiteful thing the owners kept from him was a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Malcolm Gladwell, writing today on the New Yorker web site, called him "one of the twentieth century's great heros."
Baseball players have come a long way... They were not always paid so well either. But now they might be paid too much.
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