Dick Moss, the lawyer who won free agency for baseball players, dies at age 93

NEW YORK (AP) — Dick Moss, the lawyer who gained the arbitration case that created free company for baseball gamers and revolutionized pay for skilled athletes, has died. He was 93.

Moss died Saturday at an assisted-living residence in Santa Monica, California, the Main League Baseball Gamers Affiliation mentioned Sunday. He had been sick for a number of years.

Employed by union govt director Marvin Miller as common counsel in 1967, Moss argued the 1975 case involving pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally that led to arbitrator Peter Seitz placing down the reserve clause. That provision for a unilateral one-year renewal had been included in each contract since 1878 and had enabled groups to manage gamers by sustaining these agreements may very well be prolonged perpetually.

Seitz selected Dec. 23, 1975, the clause meant solely a single one-year renewal. The choice impacted all sports activities throughout North America and led to collectively bargained free company in baseball.

“A titan of the trade. He impacted the trade at the moment like few others,” mentioned David Cone, a pitcher who was a member of the union management and a Moss consumer. “A bit eccentric, however very enjoyable loving, only a gregarious character, nice man to be round. Lifetime of the social gathering, an important man to have a drink with.”

On the time of Seitz’s choice, the common Main League Baseball wage was just below $45,000. It rose to $76,000 in 1977 and by 2023 was $4.5 million, a 1,000-fold improve.

MLB’s revenues elevated at a much less steep fee, from $163 million in 1975 to greater than $11 billion in 2023, a 70-fold rise.

“The distinction between profitable and shedding was billions and billions of {dollars}, perhaps tens of billions of {dollars},” Moss mentioned at a twenty fifth anniversary social gathering he threw in December 2000.

Baseball gamers’ positive factors had been adopted carefully by different sports activities, with unions gaining liberalized free company rights within the NBA in 1976 and the NFL in 1993.

Richard Maurice Moss III was born in Pittsburgh on July 30, 1931. He acquired levels from the College of Pittsburgh and Harvard Legislation College.

After two years within the Military, Moss labored for a Pittsburgh legislation agency, turned a Pennsylvania assistant legal professional common and in 1963 joined the United Steelworkers as an affiliate common counsel on a workers the place Miller was assistant to union president David McDonald.

Miller was employed by the baseball union in 1966 and Moss joined him six months later. As Miller organized the gamers right into a cussed unit, Moss negotiated the primary collective bargaining settlement in 1968, elevating the minimal wage from $6,000 to $10,000. The 1970 settlement added grievance arbitration and the 1973 deal instituted wage arbitration.

“Marvin was actually the proper man for that point,” Moss instructed The Related Press in 1991. “The gamers trusted him. He instilled confidence and respect within the gamers, and he was one thing of a father determine to them.”

Gamers confirmed their resolve throughout strikes in 1972 and ‘73 and a lockout in 1976. A lawsuit by Curt Flood in search of to finish baseball’s antitrust exemption misplaced on the U.S. Supreme Court docket in 1972.

The primary large breakthrough got here in December 1974, when Seitz dominated in an arbitration that Oakland had breached the contract of Catfish Hunter by failing to make a $50,000 fee right into a long-term annuity fund and he declared Hunter a free agent. The New York Yankees signed him to a $3.2 million, five-year deal, an indication of what gamers may earn with out restrictions.

“Dick managed to win that case establishing one thing novel for baseball, the primary actual free agent who didn’t get there by being launched,” mentioned Donald Fehr, who labored below Miller and Moss, then headed the gamers’ affiliation from 1983 to 2009. “The magnitude of the restraint was demonstrated.”

When Messersmith and McNally performed seasons with out contracts, the union filed grievances and Moss argued the circumstances earlier than Seitz on Nov. 21 and 24 and Dec. 1, 1975. Seitz issued his choice on Dec. 23, ruling “there isn’t any contractual bond between these gamers and the Los Angeles and the Montreal golf equipment, respectively. Absent such a contract, their golf equipment had no proper or energy … to order their companies for his or her unique use for any interval past the ‘renewal 12 months’ within the contracts which these gamers had heretofore signed.”

Seitz’s choice was upheld by U.S. District Choose John W. Oliver in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, and the eighth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals. the place Moss performed the oral argument on the union’s behalf. Free company guidelines had been agreed to within the labor contract of July 1976, and the primary free-agent class to realize riches included future Corridor of Famers Reggie Jackson and Rollie Fingers.

Miller educated gamers on how you can obtain their objectives and Moss developed the authorized ways.

“Working in tandem was precisely what constructed the stable basis,” mentioned former pitcher Steve Rogers, a Moss consumer and longtime union official. “None of what’s taking place right this moment exists with out the stable basis.”

Moss stop the union in July 1977 to turn out to be an agent, and his purchasers included future Corridor of Famers Nolan Ryan, Jack Morris and Gary Carter. He negotiated Ryan’s deal for the primary $1 million annual wage in 1979 and argued the case that bought Fernando Valenzuela the primary $1 million wage in arbitration in 1982.

In 1987, he helped expose homeowners’ collusive actions by giving the Chicago Cubs a clean contract for Andre Dawson, which the crew stuffed in with a $500,000 base wage plus bonus alternatives. House owners misplaced three grievances and settled the circumstances with the union in 1990 for $280 million.

In 1992, he helped argue the grievance that led arbitrator George Nicolau to overturn Steve Howe’s lifetime ban, the pitcher’s seventh suspension for substance abuse. In each 1989 and 1994, he labored to arrange a brand new league with out ever getting groups on a discipline.

He’s survived by his third spouse, Carol Freis, whom he married in 1980, and a daughter from his second marriage, to Rolinda, Nancy Moss Ephron. One other daughter from his second marriage, Betsy, predeceased him.

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