Under Miller's leadership as their union chief, the average players' salary went from $10,000 in 1967 to $329,000 by 1984 while the minimum salary increased from $6,000 to $40,000...
[A] group of major league players, Jim Bunning, Robin Roberts and Harvey Kuenn, approached him in early 1966 about becoming executive director of their newly-formed players union. At the time, they told him, as an appeasement to the vast majority of conservative players, they were prepared to offer the job of general counsel of the union to former vice president Richard Nixon – a dealbreaker for Miller, an avowed liberal Democrat, who informed them he could not work with Nixon...
[A] few days later, Roberts called him back and urged him to re-consider taking the executive director's job - with the agreement that he could name his own general counsel...
It is ironic that as a liberal Democrat Marvin Miller fought to implement the ultimate free market system within his industry. The MLBPA just wanted to freely participate in the free market, it was the owners who wanted a socialist based model. The players had the distiction of not only being employees but were more importantly the product. They only wanted the freedom to negotiate individually their terms of employment. And to think that a liberal was the one who fought to bring this about.