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Part II, online, features Jon asking R.A. how he comes to use words like "circuitous". R.A. responds with "voracious".

R.A. worked "circuitous," "poetic" and "trajectory" into one answer on TDS. So he doesn't do that just to impress Guys!

Brinks Truck guards with a very heavy briefcase.

Edgy MD wrote: Wow. A hat tip from the man and a comparison to C.S. Lewis. That was unexpected. I've always been more of a J.J. Lewis man.

R.A. on The Daily Show tonight, Tuesday.

Lenny gets 6 1/2 months.

Ex-Met Orel Hershiser and not yet ex-Met R.A. Dickey talk knuckleball in ESPN: The Magazine. TIM KURKJIAN: R.A., do you remember this heart-to-heart you had with Orel [then the pitching coach with Dickey's team, the Rangers] about your career? Let's start with that, the '05 conversation with Orel. R.A. DICKEY: OK. Well, I just kind of ran out of pellet juice, you know? When Orel was a pitching coach in 2003 and, you know, there was some real hope for me to become maybe a fourth or fifth starter, a really good swing man, I was low 90s -- you know, high 80s, low 90s, and could really change speeds well. But in 2004, 2005, I just started -- the velocity started dropping from low 90s to max 88, to max 86. I'd run out of gas as a conventional pitcher [with the Rangers] and was kind of just hanging on, just trying to survive as long as I could before I felt like the inevitable call would come. When Orel approached me, it was never a hard line in the sand. It was always, "We think you can become a great knuckleball pitcher." And the way they presented it to me made it very appealing. KURKJIAN: Orel, what do you remember about that conversation? I mean, you essentially had to go tell a veteran pitcher, "We don't think you can do this anymore." OREL HERSHISER: Well, you know, a compliment to R.A., because you don't have this relationship with every pitcher, every player. R.A. is such a personable and honest guy that we had a deeper relationship than just having a normal pitching coach/pitcher relationship. I mean, R.A. is a very outgoing guy. He's going to do everything he can to improve himself and to improve the team. And even during the times when he was pitching well, he was always a work in progress. I can just remember guys that you're actually closer to than pitchers who really don't want to let you into their life and to their career. You're their coach, but you're not there every moment, every decision with them. R.A. is that kind of open guy that he trusts people, wants to learn and makes his own decisions -- that made the conversation so much easier.

They're non-tenders, too.

While Lenny Dykstra awaits sentencing in L.A. Monday, Jim Baumbach of Newsday does an exhaustive profile of Nails's downhill ride. The members of the 1986 world champion Mets walked somberly through the doors of the Christ Fellowship Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., one sunny day last February. Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, Howard Johnson and Wally Backman, names engraved in Mets lore, were there for the funeral of Gary Carter, the team's Hall of Fame catcher, who had died at age 57 of brain cancer. Lenny Dykstra, who patrolled centerfield, also was among the more than 2,000 mourners. In Game 3 of the 1986 National League Championship Series against the Astros, Dykstra hit one of the most important home runs in Mets history, a walk-off shot that drove in Backman. At 5-9, small for a professional athlete, Dykstra personified the fire and toughness on a team of fighters. He played all out, all the time. He was cocky and brash. Many of his former Mets teammates had not seen him in years. All they knew of him were the rumors -- that Dykstra, who had lived in mansions and flown in private jets, was flat broke, sometimes sleeping in hotel lobbies. Now he was under house arrest after being charged with federal bankruptcy fraud -- stealing and selling property that no longer belonged to him -- and he needed the permission of a federal judge in Los Angeles to attend Carter's funeral. Dykstra's appearance stunned his old teammates. No longer was he the tough guy nicknamed Nails. His once-strong body was bent over. He looked far older than his 49 years. "His health, it looked like it was in decline," former closer Jesse Orosco said. "He was a little bit slouched over and he was talking a little different." At times he was incoherent, Backman said. Through the mumbling, "it was hard to even understand Lenny." Outside the church on a smoke break, Backman said Dykstra told him "that he expected to be dead within five years." [...] Dykstra soon became Nails. His determination had no limits, which the police recognized during a high school Christmas break. According to his memoir, "Nails," published after the 1986 World Series, Dykstra broke into Anaheim Stadium, where the Angels play. He said security officers caught him on the warning track throwing balls to himself off the centerfield wall. Baker remembers asking Dykstra why he broke into the stadium. "I have to make sure once I'm a pro," Dykstra told him, "that I can catch the ball against the wall." Dykstra brought that surefire belief with him to a tryout the Mets held in 1981 for high school seniors in Southern California. Joe McIlvaine, then the Mets' scouting director, remembers one of the scouts at the check-in table looking over Dykstra's small build and mistaking him for a batboy. Dykstra, McIlvaine remembered, responded by staring down the scouts and sternly telling them, "I'm Lenny Dykstra, and I'm the best player you're going to see here today." McIlvaine said he was impressed by Dykstra's bravado -- and even more by his skills. He wanted to take Dykstra as high as the third round of the draft, but Mets scouts assured him there wasn't much interest in him elsewhere. So the Mets waited until the 13th round. When it came time to negotiate his contract, McIlvaine said Dykstra demanded that he start at Class A, one level higher than everyone else. "Some people may call it cockiness, but it was a good kind of cockiness because he 100 percent believed in his ability . . . Lenny could never fail in his own mind," McIlvaine said. McIlvaine let Dykstra skip rookie ball. The brash kid quickly rose through the Mets' minors, breaking into the majors in 1985. At Shea Stadium, he became a fan favorite for his hustle. His uniform always was dirty. As Wilson said: "When you live on the ledge like Lenny did -- and I say live on the ledge because he played on the edge, with a reckless abandon -- you wouldn't be surprised if he ran into a wall and broke his arms." Dykstra etched his place in Mets history on Oct. 11, 1986, when he launched a walk-off two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Astros to win Game 3 of the NLCS. Shea Stadium erupted, Mets jumped out of the dugout and Dykstra raced around the bases with his arms in the air. He wrote in his memoir that the home run "changed my life." Dykstra's homer is considered one of the most important in franchise history. And it wasn't his only big hit during the Mets' postseason run that year. His home run to lead off Game 3 of the World Series in Boston provided a momentum swing for the Mets, who had lost the first two games at home. The team won its first title since 1969 in seven games. After the Series, Dykstra bought a home in Port Washington, expecting to be a longtime Met. But it didn't work out that way. The Mets platooned him with Wilson during the next three seasons, which angered him. The Phillies traded for him in 1989, an opportunity their general manager, Lee Thomas, said he had been waiting for since watching his performance in the 1986 postseason. "He was a red-light player," Thomas said. "The minute the TV cameras are on, he knows how to play. He's as good under pressure playing baseball as anyone I've seen." [...] In 2009, Dykstra's wife of 25 years, Terri, whom he met while playing for a Mets minor-league affiliate in Jackson, Miss., filed for divorce. Efforts to reach her were unsuccessful. Dykstra filed for bankruptcy in July 2009 to stave off a planned auction of the Gretzky home, saying in court papers he was $12.5 million in the hole, with $24.6 million in assets and $37.1 million in debt. In laying out their case against Dykstra, federal prosecutors say he "stole or destroyed" more than $400,000 worth of sports memorabilia and high-end furniture and vanities from inside the home during an 18-month period. Under Chapter 7 bankruptcy rules, those items were legally the property of the bankruptcy trustee, who would sell them to pay back creditors. Prosecutors say Dykstra sold items to pawn shops, antique stores and on eBay and Craigslist. Keith Hernandez, the former Mets first baseman who is a broadcaster for the team-owned network, said Dykstra tried to sell him a private jet around the same time. But Hernandez said he "had heard the stories" about Dykstra and "wanted nothing to do with it." Dykstra's spiral continued at such a rapid pace that in January 2010, he told the Ventura County Star newspaper in California that he was homeless and "fighting for my life." "He was kind of down and out and things were changing rapidly for him," said Dan Herman, who was Dykstra's publicist in 2010-11. "One day he would have money. The next he wouldn't." Herman said he counseled Dykstra to stick to the autograph circuit for former ballplayers, believing Dykstra could make a living off his name. But whenever Herman set up a show, he said Dykstra would always come up with a problem at the last minute. He wanted first-class plane tickets. Or more money. "I would say 40 percent of the time he was Nails," Herman said. "It was the other 60 where he was, like, crazy." Prosecutors, as well as friends, said Dykstra was abusing drugs and alcohol. In April 2011, Dykstra's life took a far worse turn. He was arrested by Los Angeles Police on charges that he used false information to lease cars. Court papers say police found cocaine and Ecstasy, along with somatropin, a synthetic human growth hormone, at his L.A. residence. A day later he was indicted on federal bankruptcy fraud charges. Then, in August, he was charged with indecent exposure. Shortly after the arrests, Dykstra visited a longtime friend's home in the Philadelphia area. John Bolaris, a meteorologist in Philadelphia, had known Dykstra for two decades. Bolaris met Dykstra in his apartment building lobby. He said Dykstra's clothes were covered with food stains, some of his teeth were missing and he had no money. "Dude," Bolaris said, "what's going on?" Dykstra said he had taken a cab ride overnight from Virginia, where he had been watching his son Cutter play minor-league baseball. He told Bolaris he needed $1,000 to pay the driver and another $2,000 to book a cross-country flight home to California, where Dykstra said he had to report to authorities that evening. Bolaris gave him the money. "He was a mess," Bolaris recalled. "I let him use my shower. Made him a turkey burger. Gave him some clothes I had from some golf tournament." When it was time for Dykstra to leave, they hugged and Dykstra cried. Bolaris said Dykstra turned to him and said, "Remember when I thought a thousand dollars was ashtray money? Not anymore." That day of the Carter funeral, Mookie Wilson stepped into the aisle of the church and gave Dykstra a big hug. "In spite of his misfortune, he is still one of us," Wilson said. "There's not an event where we don't get together that we don't ask if anyone has spoken with Lenny, how is he doing?" Other former Mets teammates from 1986 have distanced themselves from Dykstra. Ron Darling and Bob Ojeda declined to discuss Dykstra, Hernandez quickly ended an interview, and Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry did not return multiple messages seeking comment for this story.

The article does well by Somers but it really nails Francesa.

Daryl Boston is Robin Ventura's new first base coach on the South Side of Chicago, which may be the baddest part of town, but it won't be so perfect anymore now that Phil Humber has been claimed off White Sox waivers by the American League West's Houston Astros. The Mets now have a no-hitter. Always fun to mention that.

The Times goes all anthropological on the Schmoozer, what is it? �Good evening to you, and how you be? Steve Somers here and you there.� That�s how Steve Somers begins his nightly call-in show � his schmooze, he calls it � on WFAN, New York�s sports radio station. He�s been saying this for 25 years, and it�s a ritual greeting as reassuring to his listeners as the call of a muezzin. Then Somers gives the exact time, down to the second, and the station�s phone number: 1-877-337-6666. Not that anyone is apt to forget it. On a typical evening the calls have already begun to queue up, like circling planes seeking a landing spot, on the computer screen in front of Chris McMonigle, the show�s engineer. Paul from Hamden, Joe from Staten Island, Josh from Brooklyn, Sam from Bayonne, Bruce from Flushing, all with a point to make, a bone to pick, a tirade to deliver, or maybe just a need to hear their own voice on the radio. Most of the callers are regulars, and McMonigle�s screen indicates how many times they have phoned in the past and how often they have made it onto the radio. Not long ago, Franco from Danbury was batting over .500. When he went on the air to announce that he was done once and for all as a Yankees fan and was �turning in my pinstripes,� it was his 583rd time talking to Steve in just over 1,100 tries. Somers listened patiently and then said he doubted Franco really meant it. Somers likes to say that he and his listeners are a family, and even in the passionate, eccentric and highly opinionated world of sports radio, his family is an unusual and capacious one. Its members include, or included, such beloved regulars as Doris from Rego Park, stuttering and coughing but phoning in faithfully, and Jerome from Manhattan, whose sputtering, apoplectic anti-Yankee rants caused Somers to play the �Twilight Zone� theme while a voice said: �His is a dimension of sight, of sound, but of no mind. There�s a rubber room up ahead. You�re entering the Jerome Zone.� But Somers�s fans also include the critic Gene Shalit, the actors Charles Grodin and Tony Roberts, the comedian Steven Wright and, most famously, Jerry Seinfeld, who calls in as Jerry from Queens, though in fact he comes from Massapequa. They admire Somers�s wit and intelligence, the little set pieces he delivers at the beginning of each show, full of wordplay and alliteration. Somers writes them out beforehand on yellow legal pads, capitalizing most of the nouns, adjectives and verbs as a scribe might if copying a royal proclamation. He writes for the ear, not the eye, Somers says. A meditation on the theme of Alex Rodriguez�s collapse last fall looked like this: �The Lightning Rod only Wants to Be happy, and knows it�s very Simple to Be happy, But it�s very Difficult for Him to Be Simple. The Yankees Haven�t Been Doing Much, and Doing Nothing is Very Hard to Do, Because You Never Know when You�re Finished.� Somers-speak is formal at times and also full of Homeric-like epithets. A-Rod is always the Lightning Rod, just as Barry Bonds was Barroid and Jason Giambi was the Sultan of Shot. The Oakland A�s are the Anabolics, and the Mets are always the Metropolitans, the Knicks always the Knickerbockers. Somers is funny, even irreverent, about sports, and for many listeners that, too, is part of the appeal. He�s a relief from the dogmatism of Mike Francesa, WFAN�s biggest star, who presides over the drive-time hours with humorless ardor, seldom willing to concede a point to his listeners, who tend to be more argumentative than Somers�s. But possibly a bigger reason people tune in to Somers is that they�re in thrall to the sound of his voice, which is one of the oddest on the air. It�s thin and high-pitched, with elongated vowels and extra-sibilant s�s � the voice of a crooner more than a sportscaster. Listeners have speculated that air pockets or periodontal disease or even Bell�s palsy account for his way of speaking. Somers has no idea � he has always talked this way. �I don�t think I have a great voice,� he said not long ago in an office he shares with Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts, who use it during the day, at the WFAN studio in the West Village. �I don�t know what it�s good for except yapping. I talk and talk and say nothing, and yet I make a living.� WFAN 660 AM (101.9 on FM) is built on voices. The station, which started broadcasting on July 1, 1987, faltered at the beginning because the original announcers, people like Jim Lampley and Greg Gumbel, had bland, accentless TV voices � they didn�t sound like New York. The station caught on only when it went local. Francesa, who has a thick, Long Island accent, always sounds like he�s getting over a cold. He used to be paired with Chris Russo, a k a the Mad Dog, also a Long Islander, who was raspy and shrill and talked so fast he sounded like a tape being rewound. Benigno, who joined the station in 1995, after years of being a caller, sounds like who he is � a Jersey guy. Somers is actually from San Francisco, but you�d never know it. He grew up speaking like someone from Brooklyn. �When I was a kid, people thought I was from back East,� he said, and he added that he probably picked up a lot of characteristically Jewish inflections from his parents, who ran a mom-and-pop grocery. �When you hear me, you�re hearing them,� he said. �Steve, from Day 1 he sounded like a New Yorker,� Eric Spitz, WFAN�s program director, said. �The Mets were the big story then, and he just embraced them.� He added: �But his greatest strength is he�s an old-school entertainer. Walk into any bar and you�ll find passionate fans, knowledgeable fans, but can you be entertaining? So many people think they can do this, but they can�t.� Somers went to Lowell High School, an elite magnet school in San Francisco (Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer is an alumnus), and was valedictorian of his class, but his ambition even then was to be a New York sportscaster. �I wanted to play Broadway,� he said. �And I am � I�m a long-running play.� His goal was not radio, however, but television. He imagined himself the next Warner Wolf, and after starting out in radio, he did TV sports for 17 years in San Francisco, Sacramento, Atlanta and Los Angeles. In 1984, he lost his job and was out of work for two and a half years. When WFAN called in 1987, he hadn�t done radio in decades. Somers still thinks he could have had a great career on TV. He doesn�t really have TV looks, though. His face is long, thin and toothy; his mustache and hair, which he wears long and swept back, are going gray on him. And for TV he would have to do something about his wardrobe. He dresses these days like an aging beatnik: black pants; black turtlenecks, often with a hole in the neck or elbow; sneakers worn out at the toe. He does own several pairs of fancy Yale socks, presented to him after he spoke to some students there, but the logo is invisible unless he tugs his pant leg up. Somers worries about his bits and set pieces, he worries about the quality of the calls, he worries about everything. Though he sounds relaxed on the air, he is in fact a nervous wreck. During breaks he sometimes springs from his chair and takes the elevator 10 floors down to Hudson Street, where he snatches two or three quick puffs from a cigarette before pinching it out and heading back upstairs. He can make a single butt last for hours. Or he�ll dart down the hall to the coffee machine and brew himself yet another cup. �Sometimes there will be five minutes left till the end of the show and he�ll say, �Do I have time for a coffee?� � Casey Keefe, one of the show�s two producers, pointed out one night. �He just needs it by his side.� �He�s insecure,� McMonigle added. �That�s what drives him. He thinks he�s garbage and he�s not.� In truth, Somers doesn�t always think he�s garbage. There are nights when he gets on a roll. �I can feel it � it�s intuitive,� he said. �I can hear something. It�s so pleasing and so satisfying when it works out, and so disappointing when it doesn�t. They won�t call me to say, �You�re not on your game,� but I won�t hear how wonderful I am.� He added: �What makes me different is the humor, and when it�s not there, it kills me. I know what failure is all about.� In a perfect world, Somers would probably prefer to work days. His hours would be more regular, instead of the haphazard and confusing schedule he follows now, when he can go on the air as early as 6:30 p.m. or not until after midnight, depending on whether the station is broadcasting a game that night. And he would be interrupted by fewer commercial breaks. The evening schedule calls for 18 minutes of spots every hour, which along with the regular sports updates every 20 minutes, sometimes make it hard for him to get a rhythm going. It�s no accident, though, that the station keeps him where he is. Somers�s voice and personality seem ideally suited to the nighttime, where his is a soothing, comforting presence. �There�s a different feel at night, a different kind of audience,� Spitz said. �There�s more breaking news during the day, but the sports world slows down during these hours. Steve gives the callers more of a chance to speak � they�re more a part of the show.� �I don�t think a radio station could be more personal or more intimate with the listeners and callers than this one, and it�s probably more so late at night,� Somers said. �At night you get the people who depend on radio a little more.� Somers likes to imagine his show as a group of friends schmoozing on a stoop, or in a booth at a bar, or on a corner under a street lamp, and often it really does feel that way. The talk is nonstop sports because sports is the one thing a lot of people � men especially � know how to talk about. But Somers�s callers are not crazy � or most of them are not. They accept that there is more to life. Occasionally arguments break out under the street lamp, or someone loses it and the bartender has to cut him off, but mostly the atmosphere is relaxed and mellow and citified, like the hum of evening traffic or the sound of a baseball broadcast leaking from an open window.

They're wearing Mets shirts because they were wearing them when they met. Brilliant line in a brilliant episode. Way to go, Mets entrepreneurship.

Pop Culture alert: The 7 Line's t-shirts will appear in Thursday night's ep of 30 Rock.

Need amphetamines to stay awake listening to idiot Phillies fans yelling "CHOOCH!" at him, perhaps.

�Lenny Dykstra�s Prison Break� is one of the apps on Homer�s MyPad on �A Tree Grows In Springfield,� The Simpsons, November 25, 2012.

Charles Pierce, singing Miller's praises. The man who saved baseball from itself, and from obsolescence, passed away today at 95. There is no more important figure in the history of the game than Marvin Miller. He changed more of baseball, and more of it for the better, than anyone else. To the wider world, he was one of the last people who demonstrated why the power of a union remained important no matter how much globalist utopian bluster has come to cloud the issue down through the decades. Before Miller took over the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1966, and contrary to all of the weaponized golden-age nostalgia that so encrusts the game, baseball was on its way to becoming a lovely little relic of the distant past. It was coming off a stretch in which the Yankees won, or nearly won, every single year. (Which is why all the arguments of what free agency has done to the game's "competitive balance" is so much malarkey, and I'd like to thank Joe Biden for making that word cool again.) When he finally stepped down, the players were richer, the game infinitely more interesting and entertaining, and the noxious old reserve system that bound a player to a team in perpetuity was as dead as A.G. Spaulding. There was nothing Marvin Miller ever did that didn't make the game better for the people who follow it. There are those who believe that Miller "went too far" or refused to "compromise" who fail to recognize the fact that baseball management never has gotten over the end of the reserve system, and that it never has ceased its efforts to bring back de facto what Miller helped to end de jure. That is what the collusion scandal of the 1980s was about. That was what the cancellation of the World Series in 1994 was all about. That has been the basis of every argument advanced by management ever since Miller closed the system down. The reserve system was an offense to an advanced democracy, and Miller's great gift was to see it as all of a piece with every effort organized money ever has made to demolish the power of the people who do the actual work. He attached the Players Association to the history of trade unionism in America and he did so at a time in which the power of that movement was waning everywhere else. His great achievement with the player's union was to get a group of the most selfish individual contractors in the history of the universe to think of themselves as a union, and to act as one. Having been around baseball players for a good portion of my career, I can tell you that this is nothing short of a miracle. He is not in the Baseball Hall Of Fame because the voting process is completely corrupt and needs to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch. (My prediction is that they will vote him in posthumously, just to be nasty about it, because Miller already told them not to bother.) That there are still people who think what he did was destructive to the game is probably the best measure of all the good he did. He had a positive genius for making all the right enemies. And, at the very least, in an era in which we are fighting at every level against the suffocating embrace of plutocracy, Marvin Miller created out of a group of millionaires a union that actually worked. He should be celebrated for nothing more than that.

Sterling historical perspective on Miller from Keith Olbermann. You can argue that the pendulum Marvin unleashed from its artificial restraint has swung too far to the other side (and you�d be wrong � who is about to sign a six billion dollar contract? The new Dodgers owners, or Evan Longoria?) You can argue that what Marvin wrought has destroyed competitive balance and especially the small markets (and you�d be wrong � in the 18 seasons before his ascent, the Yankees had won 15 pennants and the Dodgers had won nine, and the team then in Kansas City had finished last or in the bottom four 13 times). You can argue that the freedom Marvin enabled has destroyed the continuity of players and made the one-team player nearly extinct (and you�d be wrong � there are 41 Hall of Famers who played for only one team, and a disproportionate number, 11, are from the Free Agent era. The only thing that�s changed is that the players can now initiate their own jarring relocation, not just the owners). You can also argue that free agency and everything else Marvin Miller accomplished has created that bill for $10,000 for eight tickets at Yankee Stadium, and you�d be wrong yet again. As someone long ago observed, this assumption requires the secondary one that the owners would never have raised prices if there hadn�t been free agency. That assumption ignores the fundaments of business, to say nothing of the reality of baseball pre-Marvin Miller, in which the owners managed to quadruple ticket prices while barely doubling player salaries. As the realities of the new economics of the game unfolded in the �70s and �80s it became obvious that for years, for decades, for generations, the owners had been keeping 70, 80, or maybe 90 percent of all revenues, and that even as society grew more affluent and the definitions of disposable income and luxury almost switched places, the owners kept hitting the players over the head with the economic hammer just because they could. One thing you can not argue is that Marvin Miller hurt the owners. This used to be the first response to the Major League Baseball Players Association that he built: that the man that Braves� Vice President Paul Richards called a �mustachioed four-flusher� was a communist or a socialist or anarchist who would destroy the game, its owners, and their God-given right to profit. It was an act of faith for owners and Commissioners and even a huge percentage of players (Stockholm Syndrome) that without the Reserve Clause that Miller and Curt Flood and Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally and Peter Seitz brought down, teams would go bankrupt, or at best the small markets would never compete nor last (in the 19 years ending in 1972, 10 franchises moved. In the 40 years since, one moved). As the first wave of Free Agents mourn him, and all the players since give distant thanks, the owners ought to build statues to Marvin Miller. According to an anecdote told by their then-VPs Buzzy Bavasi and Fresco Thompson, the Dodgers profited six million dollars in 1963 and four million in 1964 (and thus owner Walter O�Malley complained that he�d �lost� two million). That the Dodgers � and everybody else � went from those then-dizzying figures to tens of millions, then hundreds, then to signing multi-billion dollar tv deals � is directly attributable to the new economics that Miller unleashed. He, personally, put the word �billion� into baseball. Into all sports, for that matter. And via the miracle of imitation, probably into other forms of entertainment.

John D'Acquisto, pitcher for the Giants and a bunch of other teams, gives a great accounting of what it was like working with Miller from the inside. �Hey, Johnny,� a deep, strong, familiar voice woke me up at 2:30 A.M., �It�s Donny Baylor. You have to come up to Anaheim tomorrow. We�re sitting down with the owners. I need you here with me.� Don Baylor was on the players� executive director board as well as player Representative of the Angels for the Major League Baseball Players Association. It was June 1981. The players� strike was reality. This wouldn�t be the week�s extended golf outing like �72. This wouldn�t be the abbreviated strikes of �73 or �76. This was real. Don had been up half the night for many weeks with the executive board, fighting for the benefits of every baseball player in 1981. The nights and the worries about the upcoming work stoppage affected many of us, both off and on the field. Baylor himself was hitting .173 on May 31st, a week before the strike, the lowest batting average of his career to that point in the season. Don had the responsibility for many players and their families in his hands. It�s obvious that emotional pressure, in addition to long, stressful nights at the negotiating table, weighed down on his performance. I was driving home last week, listening to one of those oldies radio stations that play tunes I actually recognize. The Commodores came on. A dear friend and mentor of mine has been ailing for quite some time and been very much on my mind in recent weeks. You know how you hear a song again and again, but then one day you actually stop and listen to it? This just happened to me and remarkably, paying attention to those lyrics for the very first time, I could have sworn The Commodores were singing about Marvin Miller. During Spring Training at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, 1972, I really had no chance of making the ballclub. Juan Marichal was still our ace. Ron Bryant was about to come into his own as a dependable southpaw starter. We just acquired Sam McDowell for Gaylord Perry from the Indians and expected great things from his powerful left arm. Steve Stone was a young pitcher the ballclub had hoped would fill the fourth spot in the rotation. No, this was simply a thank you invite from the organization for my 244-strikeout effort at single A for 1971. I was still in the phase of my career where the first day of big league spring training, the first moment you step onto that field is like a six year-old child�s first time seeing the Magic Kingdom at Disneyland. All wide-eyed awe, wonder with a touch of fantasy. I walked across the diamond and this older gentleman in rolled-up shirt sleeves and loosened tie lectured my teammates right on the edge of the infield behind second base. Mays, Marichal, McCovey, they were all there. Some guys were standing, other sat on the grass, arms over knees like high school freshmen at basketball practice. First time I had ever seen my idols, my heroes looking up at another man, listening obediently. Marvin Miller gave the speech. Right beside him was his assistant, Bob Moss � they were the Players Union�s version of the M&M boys. Marvin spoke about why the work stoppage was necessary, why we needed to be concerned about our future and the future for the players that come after us. If not, then why even have a union, Marvin reasoned. He asked for questions. I raised my hand. �How is this going to affect our families and insurance later on,� I asked. �How old are you, John,� were the first words Marvin Miller ever said to me. I was in shock. �20,� I chuckled nervously. Still stunned. �You know my name?� Remember, this was also before last names on the backs of uniforms were an accepted practice. �I know everyone�s name,� he smiled, a smile you needed to take seriously as his eyes met every player one by one. �You�re all important to me.� I was hooked right then and there. �John, you�re 20 years old,� Marvin continued. �Just breaking in. What�s gonna happen if you don�t play four years in the major leagues?� I shrugged, willing to listen without having any idea where this was leading. �If you don�t play four years, you don�t get vested in the pension plan. That�s what we�re trying to do. Get you guys in the pension and benefits plan, get you something � it might not be a lot, but it�s enough to supplement income when you do retire, to supplement your social security or your next job. You�ll have enough to survive. � �I got it, so we�re fighting for players� benefits and insurance.� �Yes, exactly that.� He got us exactly what we needed. Inclusion in the pension plan, expanded payments and binding arbitration for player contract disputes. It was a major victory for the Union. * * * * * * * * * * During my first full season with the Giants, 1974, I began to pal around with a number of other Bay Area athletes. We�d see each other at many charity functions, banquet dinners, golf tournaments, autograph signings. Rollie Fingers of the A�s, Ted Hendricks of the Raiders, guys like that. Rollie and I would hang out a lot when we�d see each other. Gene Tenace, too - we used to call him �Black Jack,� a cute reference to his last name. It was all in good fun, but the atmosphere around the Oakland players was always clouded with front office drama. Owner Charlie Finley was always messing around with his players� compensation. This was nothing new. The well-known contract dispute with Vida Blue that ruined his 1972 season. Catfish Hunter, especially Catfish Hunter. �Charlie�s jerkin� Catfish around,� Rollie told me back then, baffled by the sheer stupidity of it all. Finley had refused to make some payments on an annuity to his team�s superstar pitcher. At the end of the 1974 campaign, after Hunter led Oakland to their third straight World Series title, Finley still had not made the payment. Marvin stepped in and had an arbitrator settle the dispute. �We�re gonna end up losing this guy,� was the fear in the A�s clubhouse. And they did. The resolution basically said Finley owed Catfish and Finley didn�t pay, thus breaching the contract. Hunter became a free agent on the spot and could negotiate with any other club for his services. When the Yankees signed Catfish to a $3.5 million-dollar contract, everyone took notice. The players took notice. Young contract lawyers with some connections to pro athletes decided to get into the agent business. Marvin knew it would happen like this. He knew how big this could get. He opened up our minds. * * * * * * * * * * The following season, 1975, Marvin backed two players, Andy Messersmith & Dave McNally, pitchers who would spend the year �playing without a contract� with the intent to become free to join the team of their choice, fighting the reserve clause system that had been in place for close to a century. McNally had all but retired by June of 1975 after a bad half season In Montreal, was bitter and upset by what he believed were forgotten promises of Expos management to accept a trade from the Baltimore Orioles, his team of 11 years. McNally was angered by the club, but knew it was time to walk away from the game. Marvin asked McNally to add his name to Messersmith�s suit against Major League Baseball. The Dodgers had hoped to sign Messersmith before this dispute escalated any further. The Expos actually offered McNally a bonus plus a six-figure salary if he made the team in 1976. Both sides knew McNally wasn�t coming back, but Marvin still asked him not to sign the contract. There was no way Messersmith was re-signing with Los Angeles; he knew to follow Marvin, that there was gold at the end of this legal rainbow. He also convinced McNally to join the lawsuit, which they sought binding arbitration to settle. The owners brought in Peter Seitz, whom Marvin agreed to mediate the dispute. Seitz ruled that Messersmith & McNally were �free agents,� that once the 1975 season ended, by playing without a contract, they were able to negotiate with any ballclub they chose. This outcome stunned Major League Baseball and changed the game forever. Another victory for the players union and another big victory for Marvin Miller. So now it�s 1977, I was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Padres, my hometown of San Diego. I was friends with pitcher Randy Jones, the reigning Cy Young Award winner. When I joined the club, he asked me to be his assistant. �For what,� I replied. �Assistant player representative for the Union,� he said. This role differed from the actual player rep, who dealt with issues relating to pensions, union membership matters. Lots of paperwork. My role was basically policing the clubhouse and keeping certain guys out of compromising situations and making poor decisions. If there was a problem with a player, Randy and me decided, �Better talk to Marvin.� There were a few long nights because of certain off-the-field issues. Marvin made them all right. He was our leader. Randy was a great player rep. He looked after the guys; made sure the rookies had everything they needed, dealt with matters using a practical outlook and a great sense of humor. He also could see the future. �You think free agency is big now,� he�d say over beers every so often when we�d hang out on the road, �This is nothing to what you�re gonna see in the �80s. Just you wait.� It came even sooner than that. * * * * * * * * * * Dave Winfield had an absolutely monster season in 1979. Keith Hernandez was the coolest customer in the league and Willie Stargell was everything you could ask for in a team leader, but by any metric you care to utilize, Winfield was the best player in the National League that year. An absolute superstar. He knew it. His agent knew it. The team knew it, and he only had a year left on his contract. It was no secret . Winny (what we called him) wouldn�t be a Padre for much longer. �Winny�s gone and he�s goin� to New York,� I would hear from people very close to the situation. �We�re goin� big market with David.� I talked to Winny about this myself at the end of �79, hanging out one night after a game. �So is it true?� I asked him. �Is what true,� David replied. I simply shrugged one of those �You know exactly what I�m talkin� about� shrugs. David flashed that soon to be million-dollar smile. �Oh, I�m testing the free agent market.� There really wasn�t much Padres owner Ray Kroc could do to compete. Superstar talent like that, well-heeled owners like George Steinbrenner, Gene Autry and Ted Turner getting bolder and bolder with their contract offers. You knew George would make a big play for Winfield. There was no way around it. A five-tool player with his numbers. They�ll pay him anything he wants. Randy Jones called it. By December 1980, David found another home in New York. Thanks to Marvin Miller. * * * * * * * * * * I sat up in bed after Baylor�s phone call in June 1981. I was to meet with the negotiators for the owners. It was a ballsy posture the Union was taking here, but it had to be done. This was going to test the resolve of the players union. There was a lot of money to be possibly lost by everyone if it didn�t work out. What kept us going was our faith in Marvin Miller. Even we knew the money had gotten a little crazy. Marvin had already made some of us more money than we ever dreamed of, made near millionaires of Reggie, Rudi, Campy, Goose, Pete. Multi-millionaires of Winfield and Nolan Ryan. He made other players extremely comfortable. Let me put it in this perspective. From the first free-agent class after the 1976 season to the summer of 1981, just five years later � I was making more in salary than Don Baylor and Bobby Grich (this would be rectified to a great deal in each of their next contracts, but just to illustrate the point). Marvin told us to have faith in him and this is why we did. The main issue of the 1981 strike was owners basically trying to get something for their desperation. Take Gene Autry. He was mining the free-agent re-entry draft as much as any owner every year. In 1976, the Angels had the third best starting pitcher in the game AND Nolan Ryan. In terms of offense, not one player hit more than 10 home runs or 54 RBIs. The Cowboy jumped into the free agent pool wallet-first, bringing Baylor, Grich and Joe Rudi onto the roster. The following off-season it was Lyman Bostock. 1979 brought my old teammate Jim Barr and then Rod Carew in a glorified trade-and-sign. From January 1980 to May 1981, Autry acquired Bruce Kison, Geoff Zahn, Bill Travers, Me (a story I will present to you very soon), all to replace his mistake of letting The Ryan Express cruise outta town. He made us all multi-millionaires. All the other owners wanted to be able to pick from a pool of other players � a �compensation pool� � to offset the loss of free agents like us. Marvin didn�t want this. Anything that could possibly deter the escalation of salaries, Marvin wanted no part of. That�s what brought the Baseball Strike of 1981. The cowboy let a Hall of Fame-caliber pitcher (and a drawing card) in Ryan walk out the door, was left with a Frank Tanana who was in the early stages of learning how to get by in the league without a lightning bolt in his arm, not much else and had to pay up to replenish his stable. He and owners like him wanted some restitution. This was the toughest negotiation in the union�s short history. Marvin would be in meetings until three, four o�clock in the morning, with the owner�s representative, Ray Grebey. Marvin and Grebey absolutely hated each other. The finest complement I could get from Marvin about Grebey was a simple, yet curt, �That guy�s an ass.� It was in-the-trenches war. We had the best negotiator in the world on our side. Hit the owners full-steam. Doesn�t mean there weren�t bumps in the road. I had to go to Baylor a number of times with issues. I would handle all the players and deal with their personal problems during the work stoppage. I�d call Don, �So-and-so can�t pay his mortgage.� The Union would help him out because it was the right thing. It also didn�t hurt to keep morale high among the troops in check. Marvin made sure we received the less-publicized concessions. �Meal money� (the stipend the players were given each day while on the road), got bumped up to $125 a day from $25. Rookies were thrilled with the increase because they could pay their rent with the meal money. Benefits and insurance now covered our families 100%. This came in handy for me because my son was born in 1981. The resolution wasn�t one-sided and Marvin fought for us but the owners received concessions as well. They got their compensation pool (this was the vehicle that caused the New York Mets to lose Tom Seaver after the 1983 season). The animosity remained. Marvin and Grebey hated each other so much they refused to take the celebratory �Play Ball� end of negotiation photo together. Baseball was back and all was forgotten. Marvin fought the battle and won for everyone. Well, almost everyone. And all was NOT forgotten. Five days after I met with Baylor, Marvin and the owners in Anaheim, I was sent down to AAA Salt Lake City. I never pitched another game for the California Angels. I hold no ill will toward Gene Autry. It was Buzzie Bavasi and Bill Rigney doing their magic behind the scenes. The way I saw it, I was probably overpaid by at least half the value of my contract anyway. Marvin Miller made that happen. * * * * * * * * * * Marvin and I stayed in touch well after his retirement from Union leadership in 1983. Many phone calls, a few visits, couple dinners. I last spoke to him a couple of months ago. Of course, the issue of the Hall of Fame came up. �Johnny, I�m not worried about immortality,� Marvin said, �I�m hoping I don�t die tomorrow. I�m done dealing with those guys. If they choose to put me in, that�s fine. If they don�t, that�s their deal. I only care about the love I have from you guys, the players, being able to talk to you kids and knowing that you love me. All I wanna do is see my Terry.� Terry was his wife of 70 years who passed away three years ago this month. He leaves a daughter Susan, and a son, Peter. All the boardroom battles, the 2 AM Chinese food breakfasts, the union/owner espionage to get that inch of a edge in negotiations. Miller changed the way each of the men on the 25-man roster were treated, compensated and respected by their employers. Every player who ever �played out their option� or signed a multi-year deal, owes something to this brilliant, wonderful man. Marvin. He was a friend of mine, and every player that graces the game of baseball today.

Spotted amid archival footage running in a loop on MLBN: A (probably) 1981 clip in which 27-year-old Howie Rose (who appeared 14) was gripping a WHN microphone as Marvin Miller briefed the press.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Thanks. But I don't know if I'm back yet. o1Z_hskvz1M

Most influential baseball person not in HOF dies, according to multiple reports.

R.A. was just on CBS This Morning charming the hell out of Charlie Rose. Came out in favor of reading, persevering, staying with the Mets.

A framed, matted portrait of Shea Stadium is quite visible on the wall of Dr. Danny Castellano's office on The Mindy Project, spotted in the episode that aired November 13, 2012, "Danny Castellano Is My Gynecologist".

Anne Marie Dolan: To be played in the movie by Lili Taylor.