The Double Holdout

It took years of strong stances to finally rip some control away from the greedy owners. One of the best examples came in 1966. Baseball players were ruled tyrannically by the Reserve Clause for a long time. The Reserve Clause was a part of every MLB player’s contract. In short, teams were able to automatically renew a player’s contract with the same salary and term no matter what. In order to take full advantage of this, teams only signed 1-year contracts. In practice, a ball player could have a great rookie year, get a small pay raise because they have basically no negotiating power, have a sophomore slump and have their salary slashed instantly. It was a win-win for the owners. They got to keep their best players until they were no good while paying them very little. Not even the best players could overcome that system. However, 2 pitchers found a way to beat it. Heading into the 1966 season, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale were the 2 best pitchers on the reigning World Series champion Dodgers. However, because of what I explained earlier, they both had to renegotiate their contracts prior to Spring Training. Of course, they both wanted a raise. Valid requests considering Koufax won the Cy Young award and World Series MVP in the previous year while Drysdale had finished 5th in MVP voting. The Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi was not interested in giving them the raise they wanted, but knew their importance to the club, so he cooked up a devious plan. Back in those days, players negotiated their own contracts. There were no agents, so Bavasi’s plan was to guilt them using each other. When Koufax would come in and make a demand, Bavasi would say “Drysdale isn’t asking for that much”. When Drysdale would come in and make his own demand, Bavasi would say “Koufax isn’t asking for that much”. On the surface, it seemed like a good plan. There was just 1 small problem. Don and Sandy were good friends and hung out regularly. One night at dinner, they talked about their contract negotiations and quickly realized what Bavasi was doing. So they made a pact. After that night, they went up to the Dodgers offices and told Bavasi that they would negotiate their contracts as a pair. They immediately demanded a 3-year 1 million dollar contract to be split evenly. Willie Mays was the highest paid player with a $125K salary, they were asking for $167K per year over 3 years. The Dodgers refused to negotiate with both players at once, but Don had a plan for that. His wife was an actress and she had suggested, during that dinner, having her agent, J. William Hayes, represent them. The pair agreed and told the Dodgers that Hayes would negotiate for them. Hayes also gave the pitchers advice on how to handle this sort of predicament. Most notably, he insisted they avoid the media at all costs as many of them were much more sympathetic to the Dodgers and their owner. The pitchers followed through on his advice, never spoke to the media and sat out of Spring Training. Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley was incensed. “I admire the boys’ strategy. And we can’t do without them, even for a little while. But we can’t give in to them. There are too many agents hanging around Hollywood looking for clients." Koufax and Drysdale also accounted for the possibility of the Dodgers playing hardball. They both signed up to act in the movie Warning Shot. It was a safety net in preparation for the possibility of sitting out a season to get what they wanted. Koufax and Drysdale remained firm while O’Malley threatened to trade the pitchers if they negotiated through an agent and made their teammates call the pitchers and convince them to come to Spring Training. The situation reached defcon 1 when Hayes had unearthed a California state law that essentially made the Reserve Clause illegal. When O’Malley discovered this, he told Bavasi and the pair immediately became much more welcoming to the players’ demands. The pitchers were now allowed to negotiate as a pair. Koufax was unable to attend and trusted Drysdale to handle it himself. The holdout finally ended when Koufax signed for $125K and Drysdale signed for $115K, both 1-year contracts. Sadly, Koufax pitched his very last season in 1966 and Drysdale retired just a few years later. This holdout had a greater impact than either of their careers. This was undeniable proof of the power the players could have. In the same year of this holdout, Marvin Miller became the very first executive of the MLBPA after being approved by the players. Miller used the Koufax-Drysdale holdout as proof of the importance and power that came from unionizing. It also appears that Koufax and Drysdale put fear into the owners’ hearts. One of the first requests they made when negotiating the very first collective bargaining agreement was to ban players from teaming up to hold out. Miller’s MLBPA immediately became one of the strongest unions. Just 10 years later, the Reserve Clause died and free agency was established.

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