Marvin Miller found himself pleasantly surprised by also worried. The ultimate goal of abolishing the Reserve Clause had tumbled in just ten years since he took the reins of the MLBPA. Free agency was a dream that suddenly brought new problems no one could have been prepared for.

The battle over free agent compensation burned hot and cold for years, but reached a flash point in the 1980 negotiations, leading to the longest stoppage in baseball history ... to date.

The owners continued to lose control of the players while their pockets were lined with a booming business, but the going price to keep quality players was getting more expensive. New owners embraced free agency, the old guard had to find ways to "get theirs" whether it was through roster shuffling ... or colluding to keep salaries down.

As always, you can find the articles and stories we mentioned in the episode over on our Substack page, servicetimepodcast.substack.com. You can an also upgrade to a paid subscription to support the program with ad-free listening in the substack app.

Or you can subscribe for free and be notified via email when a new episode drops. Thanks for listening, next month we reach the most destructive year of baseball's history and how they rebuilt from the 1994 strike.

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There are many names to remember across baseball's history, but a handful tend to stick around longer than you realize. Sometimes the names adorn stadiums that stood for decades, or television channels bringing their teams to the masses, or their names can live in infamy depending on the city that you ask.

Episode 3 focuses on nine owners we picked that fit this description. The owners we discuss are (in order)

Connie Mack, Charles Comiskey, Philip Wrigley Jr., Branch Rickey/Walter O'Malley, Bill Veeck Jr., Charlie Finley, Ted Turner, George Steinbrenner.

We wanted to focus on how these men rose to power, and how they maintained their image and legacy during their time as owners - and their impact on labor negotiations to this day. There's only so much we can dissect from each owner, but a few of these owners will keep popping up throughout the rest of the series.

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Major League Basebally as an entity generated over $12B in revenue last season as the Dodgers topped the Blue Jays in a seven-game World Series for the ages. But how does that flow of cash meander between the owners and the players and every licensee, vendor, fan, and rightsholder around the game.

Episode 4 lays out the current business landscape as broadly as possible, knowing a lot of the ways players and owners make and share their wealth could change with the new CBA. The purpose of this month's episode is to give you a primer to how things actually work before we tell you why some things are changing for next season.

As always, you can find the articles and stories we mentioned in the episode over on our Substack page, servicetimepodcast.substack.com. You can an also upgrade to a paid subscription to support the program with ad-free listening in the substack app.

Or you can subscribe for free and be notified via email when a new episode drops. Thanks for listening, up next, we turn back to the birth of free agency in 1976 and through the chaos of the 880s in the August episode on the way.

Connect with the show: ServiceTimePod@Gmail.com