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Bowie Kuhn was Commissioner of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1969-1984, a generation that arguably is the most important epoch in the game known as "American's Pastime." As commissioner, Kuhn oversaw the volatile era in which baseball's century-old reserve clause was terminated and free agency was inaugurated. It was a time in which the top player salaries increased by a factor of ten, the designated hitter was introduced into the American League to boost attendance, and both leagues went through expansion, boosting the number of teams from 20 to 26, to facilitate the introduction of a two-tiered playoff system. Bowie Kuhn, despite being viciously criticized by baseball team owners, the players, their union, as well as by fans and sportswriters, was head to toe a baseball man. Before he was appointed commissioner by MLB owners, he served as the National League and MLB legal counsel for almost 20 years. At the beginning of Kuhn's reign, baseball was denigrated as walking corpse, overshadowed by the National Football League. Its sobriquet "American's Pastime" was becoming a joke. The sport was criticized as too conservative, and out of touch with the times. Under Kuhn's commissionership, owners managed to continue their suzerainty over the sport, but on less advantageous terms than in the past. Forty years after the implementation of the New Deal, professional baseball was brought kicking and screaming into the 20th Century, in terms of labor relations . However, the sport was racked by a lockout in 1972 and a strike in 1981, both of which shaved many games off of their respectively seasons. Because of the militancy of the baseball players union, a new strike was feared. After the '81 baseball strike, Kuhn became the scapegoat for many, for his perceived failure in doing enough to forestall the strike, or getting it settled on terms more favorable to the owners. When Bowie Kuhn was unceremoniously retired by the owners he had served for four decades, attendance was booming, having reached record levels. For the baseball owners, it was not enough. Baseball's Lawyer Bowie Kuhn was born in Takoma Park, Maryland on October 28, 1926 and raised in Washington, D.C., the son of Louis Kuhn, a German immigrant who was an executive with a fuel company. Bowie Kuhn got his Christian name from his mother Alice, who was a descendant of the legendary Jim Bowie, who died at the Alamo. Her family had been in Maryland since the 1600s, and Kuhn could count five governors and two U.S. Senators among his ancestors. The young Bowie Kuhn's first job in baseball was when he was paid a dollar a day operating the scoreboard at Griffith Stadium for the Senators, Washington, D.C.'s pro baseball franchise. The hapless Senators gave rise to the slogan, "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." During World War II, Kuhn attended Franklin and Marshall College as part of the Navy's officer training program. With the end of the War, he transferred to Princeton University, where he took his degree in economics, graduating with honors in 1947. Kuhn then studied law at the University of Virginia Law School, from which he graduated in 1950. The newly minted law school graduate accepted an offer from the New York law firm Willkie, Farr & Gallagher. He reportedly chose the "white shoe" law firm that counted former New York Governor Thomas Dewey (the Republican Party's Presidential nominee in 1944 and '48) as one of its senior partners not due to its distinguished reputation, but because it represented the National League. Bowie Kuhn made his name and assured his position as a valuable asset to baseball's owners when he successfully defended MLB in an antitrust lawsuit the State of Wisconsin filed to stop the Milwaukee Braves from moving to Atlanta after the 1965 season. (The Braves, which are the oldest professional baseball team in terms of continuity, left Boston after the 1952 season after playing in that city since the founding of the National League in 1876.) Neither Kuhn or the owners may have known it, but the MLB layer was on his way to the top. Baseball in the 1960s The 1960s were a revolutionary time, not only in America as a whole but for baseball, too. The National League, which (like its junior partner, the American League) had consisted of eight teams during the entire 20th Century, decided to expand to 10 teams in 1960. In the late 1950s, there had been plans for a third professional baseball league, the Continental League, which would bring baseball to the major cities of America that did not have a team. The National League owners, led by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley (who had brought professional baseball to the West Coast), decided to outflank the Continental League (and the American League, too) by putting new franchises in New York City and Houston, Texas (the latter a prime potential Continental League franchise) for 1962. The American League reacted by expanding to 10 teams in 1961. The A.L., lacking a dominant owner as did the N.L., went about expansion in a haphazard way. The junior circuit decided to put a franchise in Los Angeles, thus invading Walter O'Malley's territory, and a new franchise in Minneapolis, Minnesota, another prime potential Continental League city. Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith decided he wanted the Minneapolis/St. Paul (The Twin Cities) market for himself. Granted the franchise, the A.L. decided to put its other expansion franchise in Washington, D.C., so as not to anger Congress, which had recently investigated Major League Baseball. Evoking territorial rights, Walter O'Malley forced a new ownership team led by his friend Gene Autry, the cowboy movie and singing star, on the American League. The A.L. caved in, and Autry ceded the TV rights to the new Los Angeles Angels team to O'Malley for several years (even though he owned his own TV station, one of the reasons he was interested in acquiring the A.L. franchise, so he could broadcast the games) and agreed to play for several seasons in the Dodgers' new stadium, which was to be built in Chavez Ravine. Ford Frick, the fourth commissioner of baseball, was revealed as nothing more than a puppet of O'Malley. The American League expansion in 1961 was a botch, which led to an explosion in offensive statistics, the most famous manifestation of which was Roger Maris hitting 61 home runs. (Frick, who had been Babe Ruth's ghost-writer, put an asterix on Maris' record and on all the other records set in 1961 and in 1962 in the National League, such as Dodger Maury Wills' new stolen bases record.) The National League expansion was more orderly, as the new teams had time to establish themselves, but it alos had its embarassments. While the Houston Astros did not embarass themselves, the New York Mets set a record of futility in the 20th Century, losting 120 games. In order to correct the balance of the game, the pitcher's mound was raised, which meant by 1968, "The Year of the Pitcher," offense (a feature of the game that is directly correlated with higher attendane) was being stifled. That would be corrected in 1969, another expansion year when both leagues added two more teams and split into two divisions, when the pitcher's mound was lowered. The decade of the 1960s also was characterized by the increased integration of baseball. The American League, which had lagged behind the National League in bringing in African American players, improved marginally in its recruitment of minority ballplayers. The N.L., meanwhile, increased the numbers of its African American and Latino players. It became the dominant league in the 1960s, as its All-Star squads continually defeated the best from the less-integrated A.L. (To boost its offense and attendance, the American League would adopt the designated hitter rule in 1973, allowing a batter to hit in place of the pitcher. Ironically, the D.H. was first proposed by the National League back in the 1930s, when it was lagging the A.L. in attendance due to the preponderance of popular, crowd pleasing Babe Ruth-style power hitters -- including the Babe himself -- in the junior circuit.) Interim Commissioner The aging Ford Frick was not tendered a new contract when his second term as commissioner expired in 1965. The MLB owners instead improbably hired Air Force Lieutenant General William Eckert to be the fourth commissioner of baseball, even though he had little knowledge of baseball. The owners, frankly, were looking for a puppet, so they gave Eckert a seven-year contract. After the 1968 season, MLB owners, marshaled by Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley (now the most powerful man in baseball) decided to forced out Eckert, whose inexperience was now considered a hindrance. Eckert wasn't savvy about MLB politics. Baseball was controlled by O'Malley and a few owners, who wielded an inordinate amount of influence over the game. The owners were absolutely opposed to the fledgling baseball players union that had hired United Steelworkers' economist Marvin Miller as its president in 1966. Marvin Miller, a veteran of the labor wars, was determined to make the Major League Players Association into a bona fide union. The owners, who considered their players chattel and were backed up by two Supreme Court decisions that upheld baseball's reserve clause under the legal fiction that MLB was a sport, and not an industry, were determined to oppose him. They did not trust Eckert, that he could handle Miller and the union. The courts, under the liberalizing influence of the Warren Court, could prove tricky. Bowie Kuhn had successfully defended MLB against the State of Wisconsin in the shift of the Braves franchise, but such success in the future couldn't be assured in such revolutionary times. (It transpired that the U.S. Supreme Court, under its new chief justice, Warren Burger, proved to be as friendly to baseball as past courts had been, upholding the reserve clause in the 1971 Curt Flood decision.) General Eckert was forced to resign and Bowie Kuhn was appointed interim Commissioner, assuming office on February 4, 1969.The owners would fail to keep the player's union impotent, and as Commissioner, Kuhn oversee a major work stoppage in 1972 and the first strike to hit organized sports in 1981. The Fifth Commissioner At the time of Bowie Kuhn assuming the post of commissioner (he was confirmed as the fifth commissioner in 1970, and given a long-term contract), many observers complained that baseball was too old-fashioned for the Swinging Sixties, a decade which saw the National Football League seriously challenge baseball's primacy as "America's past-time. Unlike the slow, stately paced baseball, football was television friendly, and it was television that pushed the sport to unprecedented levels of popularity in the 1960s. Football overcame baseball as the "With it" sport as it featured violence that could be shot from many angles, with plays slowed down and instantly replayed for a mass audience (many of whom had bet on the outcome of games). However, by the time Bowie Kuhn left office on September 30, 1984, baseball was enjoying its greatest popularity, with attendance up from 23 million in 1968 to 45.5 million in 1983 and money television contracts having vastly expanded during the same time frame. Strike In 1972, the first strike in baseball occurred. The players' union, the Major League Baseball Players Association MLBPA), had the players go out on strike on opening day, April 1st. The strike lasted 13 days, ending on April 13th, resulting on the cancellation of 86 games. The games were never made up, as the owners refused to pay the players for the games missed. The 1972 strike created a highly unusual schedule, as different teams played different numbers of games. The Boston Red Sox lost the American League East pennant to the Detroit Tigers by half-a-game, as the BoSox had played one game less than Detroit. The MLBPA originally had been formed primarily to lobby the owners for higher contributions to their pension fund. Marvin Miller made it into a real union, when he took over in 1966. The '72 strike was settled when the owners agreed to put $500,000 into the players' pension fund and permitted salary arbitration. The 1981 strike would prove more acrimonious. Free Agency It was during Bowie Kuhn's commissionership that the reserve clause, the contract language that was found by the courts to bind a player to one team in perpetuity, was finally overthrown, by a mediator's decision (the Messersmith decision, in 1976). Free agency came to baseball, and rather than ruin the sport, as was predicted by tight-fisted owners and by Bowie Kuhn himself, it actually helped baseball flourish, by allowing teams with needs to gain access to quality players. Unlike the New York Yankees dynasties of the 1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s, early '60s, and late '70s, baseball from the time the New York Yankees repeated as World Series champs in 1977 and '78 (free agency debuted with the 1977 season) did not have a repeat champion until the Toronto Blue Jays of 1992 and '93. Many more teams went to the play-offs and the World Series, and baseball under free agency underwent a surge in popularity. Many owners were mad at Kuhn at the end of his first term as commissioner, which coincided with the advent of free agency. However, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley managed to rally owners behind the fifth commissioner, which effectively quash the "Dump Bowie" movement. He was given a second, seven-year contract as commissioner in 1977. 1981 Strike The Collective Bargaining Agreement that governed MLB's labor relations was set to expire in 1981, and the decided to take a hard-line. They wanted a roll-back of free agency. In preparation for for an anticipated strike, the owners took out an insurance policy to cover them for losses. The MLBPA went out on strike on June 12, 1981, and the players did not go back to work until August 9th, after a settlement was reached on July 31st. The negotiations had been extremely bitter, but the union decided to give the owners a minor victory by mandating a minimum of six years in the major leagues as a prerequisite for free agency. They also allowed owners who lost a "premium" free agent to have a player from a list of unprotected players from all MLB clubs as compensation. The strike wiped out 713 games, representing 38% of the entire season. The losses to both sides and parties connected to the baseball business such as radio and TV broadcasters totaled $146 million. The owners' loss was $72 million. Reportedly, the owners gave in when their insurance coverage had run out. Bowie Kuhn was heavily criticized for not doing more to prevent the strike, or once it was underway, to stop it. Red Smith, the Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswrtier who received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame, said of the commissioner, "this strike wouldn't have happened if Bowie Kuhn were alive today." The owners were dissatisfied with the outcome of the 1981 strike, as it did not put a brake on spiraling player salaries. Kuhn's lack of decisiveness during the strike, his lack of utility in curbing the union, plus his public positioning of himself as a commissioner representing equally the owners, the players and the fans (while in fact, serving as a dogsbody for the owners) eroded the owners' respect for him. The '81 strike likely doomed his dream of becoming a three-term commissioner. Disciplinarian Bowie Kuhn proved to be a firm commissioner when it came to matters of discipline with both players and owners, though he was criticized by the players for serving the best interests of the owners (which was natural, the Commissioner being appointed by and serving at the pleasure of MLB's owners). During his tenure, he suspended numerous players for drug involvement and barred both Willie Mays (in 1979) and Mickey Mantle (in 1983) from the sport due to their involvement in casino promotion. (Both superstars subsequently were reinstated by Kuhn's successor, Peter Ueberroth, after he assumed the post of commissioner in 1985). He also levied the first suspension of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, after "The Boss" was convicted of making illegal campaign contribution to President Richard M. Nixon's reelection campaign. (Steinbrenner felt he was unfairly treated as he, a ship builder dependent upon government contracts and a member of the Democratic Party to boot, had been shaken down by the corrupt President.) Oakland A's owner Charles O. Finley also incurred the Wrath of Kuhn. It had been Finley's idea to stage World Series games at night so that they could attract a larger TV audience, an innovation first implemented in 1971. Finley didn't like it that Kuhn seemingly was credited with his idea. Finley proved a major embarrassment to baseball (both as sport and business) when he forced second baseman Mike Andrews to sign a false affidavit saying he was injured after he committed two consecutive errors in the 12th inning of Oakland's Game 2 loss to the New York Mets during the 1973 World Series. After A's manager Dick Williams and A's players led by team captain Sal Bando rallied to Andrew's defense, Kuhn forced Finley to reinstate Andrews. In 1976, when Finley -- in reaction to the imposition of free agency in baseball that would "free the slaves" and fatten the bank accounts of Mercedes dealers beginning with the end of the 1976 season -- attempted to sell several players who were potential free agents to the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees for $3.5 million, Kuhn blocked the deals on the grounds that they would be bad for the game. Baseball's First Drug Scandal Towards the end of Bowie Kuhn's commissionership, four players from the Kansas City Royals were found guilty of cocaine use in 1983. In addition, established stars as Ferguson Jenkins, Keith Hernandez, Dave Parker, and Dale Berra admitted to having problems with drugs. The drug mess threatened to tarnish the image of baseball, but Kuhn was very firm in disciplining players who abused drugs (in contrast to current Commissioner Bud Selig, who ignored the steroids/performance-enhancing drugs problem as the unprecedented numbers of home runs hit by artificially bulked up players was deemed good for business). Bowie Kuhn was both praised and attacked for his firm stand against offenders, and he also had antagonized some owners over his ineffectual leadership during the 1981 baseball strike, which ended with a clear victory for the players union. In 1982, some of the owners organized a move to push him out of office. In 1983, Kuhn and his supporters made a last-ditch effort to renew his contract but ultimately failed as many MLB owners didn't think he could handle an upcoming work stoppage by the players union. It was announced that he was to be replaced with businessman and 1984 Los Angeles Olympics organizer Peter Ueberroth after the 1984 regular season. Legacy A lifelong baseball fan, Bowie Kuhn was a conservative, or as others would put it, a baseball purist. He did what he could to maintain the balance of the game between hitter and pitcher, though ironically, his commissionership did see the introduction of the designated hitter rule in the American League. He was unable to maintain the imbalance of power between owners and players, however, and for that, he was let go. Kuhn said, "I believe in the Rip Van Winkle Theory: that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for 70 years, walk into a ballpark and understand baseball perfectly." Peter O'Malley, the Los Angeles Dodgers and son of Walter O'Malley, the man who helped make Kuhn commissioner, paid tribute to him as his last term was nearing its end.. "His support of the integrity of the game was excellent," O'Malley said. "The game has never been more popular." A game derided as a "leaping corpse" (in baseball writer Roger Angel's memorable phrase) when he became commissioner has reestablished itself as "America's Past Time" by the time he left it. Post-Baseball Career Following his service as the czar of baseball, Bowie Kuhn returned to the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He also was named President of the Kent Group, a business, sports and financial consulting firm. A Roman Catholic, Kuhn became an adviser and board member for Domino's Pizza owner Tom Monaghan's Ave Maria Foundation. He served as Chairman of the Catholic Advisory Board of the Ave Maria Mutual Funds since the inception of their first mutual fund, Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund, in 2001. Kuhn and lawyer Harvey D. Myerson formed the firm of Myerson and Kuhn, which eventually declared bankruptcy. He died on March 15, 2007 in Jacksonville, Florida from pneumonia. Hall of Fame Bowie Kuhn unsuccessfully lobbied for a third term as commissioner, not wanting to relinquish the game he loved so much, and for so long. Speaking of the next commissioner, he said that he should resist the pressures of owners and other interests to sell-out the best interests of baseball, which at its heart, was the baseball fan. Speaking to the New York Times in 1984, Bowie Kuhn said of the next commissioner, "He should tell the compromisers to get lost. They are burglars of our patrimony. They will never understand the threat to baseball posed by such things as legalized gambling, sports betting, drug abuse and undesirable associations. He should use his powers fearlessly to protect the integrity of the game. The critics will call him self-righteous and moralistic. Have courage. Ignore them." It is sage advice that Bud Selig, the seventh commissioner of baseball, has ignored. Nine months after his death, Bowie Kuhn was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York by the Veterans Committee, by a vote of 10 to 2. (Fittingly, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley was voted in that year, too, by a vote of 9 to 3. Marvin Miller, the labor boss who changed baseball and who proved to be Kuhn's nemesis, did not make it.) The New York Times quoted Philadelphia Phillies co-owner Bill Giles, a member of the Veterans Committee whose father had been the President of the National League, for the reasoning behind Kuhn's inclusion in baseball's ultimate shrine. It was Giles and former American League President Bobby Brown who had pushed for Kuhn's enshrinement. "He was really for the fan.... Bowie kept saying, 'We have to keep the fans foremost in our thinking.' He honestly loved the game." Note: An earlier version of this biography originally appeared on the Internet Movie Database Sources: BaseballLibrary.com, Bowie Kuhn New York Times, "Bowie Kuhn, 80, Former Baseball Commissioner, Dies" Washington Post, "Without Playing Politics, Kuhn Governed the Game Well" by Thomas Boswell |
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