Baseball Beat: The Blog: Alternative Dispute Resolution & the History of Baseball: Part Four

IV. BASEBALL’S HISTORIC ARBITRATOR

Peter Seitz

Peter Seitz was a veteran of 40 years of arbitration.[1] He was a lawyer and member of the American Arbitration Association’s labor-management panel. In 1965-66, he was part of the panel that studied collective-bargaining procedures in New York City and made recommendations that provided the basis for the Office of Collective Bargaining and the city’s current labor law. A member of the National Wage Stabilization Board, counsel and assistant to the director of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and director of industrial relations for the Defense Department.[2] He had a reputation as a professional and intelligent arbitrator.[3] Seitz was also a student of history and literature as is evidenced in his frequent letters.[4]

Baseball’s first professional arbitrator was Gabriel Alexander of Detroit. In the fall of 1974, the owners and MLBPA agreed upon Seitz as the successor to the retiring Alexander.[5] When he was selected as baseball’s impartial arbitrator he was not considered pro-union. There was a wealth of professional sports arbitrations by Seitz who worked as an arbitrator for the National Basketball Association (hereafter “NBA”) and the NBA Players Association (hereafter “NBAPA”). MLBPA’s Miller had not been particularly impressed with his decisions while he was with the Steelworkers Union. As any reasonable person would do, Miller researched Seitz background as an arbitrator in union disputes with particular emphasis on the NBA.

In a 1969 arbitration for the NBA and NBAPA, Seitz noted in an opinion the 1969 California Court of Appeals ruling which gave NBA star Rick Barry the right to sign with the Oakland Oaks of the rival American Basketball Association after playing out his option year with the San Francisco Warriors. The wording of the renewal clause of the NBA’s Uniform Player Contract was copied from baseball standard player’s contract. Miller felt this decision was significant as an indicator of Seitz legal mind.[6] Prior to the Messersmith/McNally arbitration, the Player Relations Committee’s (hereafter “PRC”) attorneys looked over Seitz Hunter decision and NBA arbitrations. After lengthy discussion, the PRC voted 6-1 in favor of keeping Seitz as arbitrator with the lone dissenter being the Expos, McHale.[7]

Seitz soon became the first and only historic arbitrator in baseball history as he was the deciding vote in the Hunter and Messersmith/McNally arbitrations. To the owners, Seitz name will live in infamy. To the players, he was their Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves. The difference being when Lincoln freed the slaves he was not fired, while Seitz was immediately terminated.[8] “I am not a new Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves. I wasn’t striking a blow at the reserve clause. I was just interpreting the renewal clause as a lawyer and elderly arbitrator,” said Seitz following the Messersmith decision.[9]

In 1977, Seitz gave an interview to The Chronicle of National Academy of Arbitrators (hereafter “The Chronicle”) and discussed his thoughts on baseball, owners, and firing:

When I signed my name to the reserve system decision I was instructed by my employers not to distribute the document nor to discuss it with sports reporters, many could not report it properly, and not to write or make speeches about it. But I bethought myself of my First Amendment rights.

So I held several press conferences, I announced my retirement as baseball arbitrator, and I explaining the impact of my decision. I refrained from any characterization of the parties or a discussion of the points they had attempted to make before the panel. For some days thereafter, sportswriters called to thank me for the assistance I had given them in writing a factual story of what the decision meant.[10]

Throughout the interview, Seitz’s angst grew as he described the incompetent reporting of the decision by the press. “…one Neanderthal type in a column of a paper with enormous circulation, who did not attend my briefing session, got everything wrong and called me a terrorist with a bomb in my hands, a little Napoleon destroying the American game.” The attacks by the press and baseball’s ownership personally and professionally bothered him to great lengths. The “Neanderthal” even produced a theory that Seitz was a former Brooklyn Dodgers fan and used the Messersmith decision to get back at Walter O’Malley for moving the franchise to Los Angeles. The reporting could not have been further from the truth.

In 1982, Seitz wrote a letter to Commissioner Kuhn concerning his termination:

Normally, a hapless pitcher, bring removed from the mound in the course of an inning will get a few kind words from the manager for his efforts, perhaps a reassuring pat on the back and even an opportunity to doff his cap in deference to the applause of the more sensitive and appreciative audience. This is part of what makes baseball a sport rather than a cockfight. I am afraid too many of the franchise owners, your clients, are unaware of this.

He never forgave the owners for the misgivings and embarrassment of his termination. Likewise, the owners never forgave Seitz for his ruling. The greatest indignation was that he was treated in a manner not befitting a professional of his stature. During his tenure as baseball’s impartial arbitrator, he actually ruled in the owners’ favor more often than not.[11] While Seitz is known for his two rulings in favor of the players, he worked on numerous other arbitrations in baseball. Years later, the owner decided to not renew Kuhn’s contract as commissioner and Seitz thought it the perfect moment to drop Kuhn a line:

Dear Mr. Kuhn,
In time, as it happened to Cardinal Wolsey, Sit Thomas More, Archbishop Cranmer, Billy Martin (the itinerant and ubiquitous manager) and to Seitz (your one-time quondam arbitrator) destiny has finally overtaken Bowie Kuhn. I take no pleasure in welcoming you into the company of the erstwhile makers and shakers. Indeed, I feel some remorse, despite the fact that there were some rather important occasions when your convictions were at odds with my own. The Messersmith Case, by now, is as ancient history as the Carthaginian Wars. I bear no discernible scars and I am cast out by the Major Leagues with the same grave and empathy as John Milton’s Jehovah when he cast out Satan from heaven in Paradise Lost. The fact that I did make some small contribution to dispute settlement in baseball (it is my impression that aside from the Catfish Hunter and Reserve System cases, the clubs benefited more from my decisions that the Players’ Association) was utterly ignored. I was dismissed unceremoniously with the conventional pink slip without a word of kindness except from John Gaherin, who, being a gentleman, could not act otherwise…At the age of seventy-seven my indignation at the crude, vulgar and offensive manner in which the owners saw fit to disparage my professionalism and integrity is considerably mellowed by time…The fact that we had strongly contradictory views on the Messersmith Case, however, does not dissuade me from hoping that your departure from your post as Commissioner will not be characterized by the meanness and rudeness which accompanied my dismissal…

Very truly yours,
Peter Seitz[12]

After baseball, Seitz continued to work as an arbitrator for the NBA. He wrote occasional letters to the New York Times that were both knowledgeable and acerbic. Of all his work, Seitz left his most indelible impact on baseball. His impact can only be compared to other legendary baseball figures such as Branch Rickey and Miller. Seitz was once asked if he was bothered that Jim “Catfish” Hunter never thanked him during his retirement and Hall of Fame induction speech. Hunter thanked George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, and his former managers but never mentioned Seitz, whose ruling provided his great lifetime of wealth. “He doesn’t have to thank me. You don’t thank a judge for doing his duty and you don’t thank an arbitrator. He should thank Marvin Miller.”[13]

On October 18th, 1983, Seitz died at Lenox Hill Hospital after spinal surgery at age 78.[14] At the end of his interview with The Chronicle, Seitz was asked if had enjoyed his life as an arbitrator and he responded, “If I were reborn, I probably would lack the good sense and judgment to do anything else. Absent rebirth, I am as happy as one with my dour personality can be.”[15]

V. CONCLUSION

Curt Flood got the ball rolling. In negotiations for the second and third basic agreements, arbitration of grievances and salary arbitration were established. The arbitration clause presented a forum for Jim “Catfish” Hunter to bring his breach of contract claim and named him baseball’s first free agent. Arbitration allowed Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally a stage to present their case against the reserve clause and the infantecent right of renewal. Salary arbitration allowed the player masses an opportunity to have a true say in their salary for the first time.

ADR comes in many forms such as negotiations, mediation, and arbitration. This paper has only scratched the surface of the impact of ADR in baseball. Its greatest accomplishment is the downfall of the reserve clause, but it has many other functions and achievements throughout baseball’s rich history and beyond. If Peter Seitz is the Abraham Lincoln of baseball, then ADR had to be the Emancipation Proclamation for baseball.

END NOTES:
[1] Kenneth Denlinger, If You Don’t Like the Call, Then Fire the Umpire, The Washington Post, Dec. 25, 1975, at E11.
[2] Damon Stetson, Peter Seitz, 78, the Arbitrator In Baseball Free-Agent Case, N.Y. Times, Oct. 19, 1983, at D25.
[3] Miller, at 245. [4] Miller, at 333.
[5] Red Smith, Christmas Spirit, N.Y. Times, Dec. 24, 1975, at 15.
[6] Miller, at 246. [7] Bowie Kuhn, Hardball 156, Times Books (1987).
[8] Murray Chass, Baseball’s Abraham Lincoln, N.Y. Times, Sep. 25, 1979, at C13.
[9] Kenneth Denlinger, If You Don’t Like the Call, Then Fire the Umpire, The Washington Post, Dec. 25, 1975, at E11.
[10] Red Smith, Arbitrators and Whooping Cranes, N.Y. Times, May 25, 1977, at 23.
[11] Miller, at 246. [12] Miller, at 332. [13] Chass, at C13.
[14] Damon Stetson, Peter Seitz, 78, the Arbitrator In Baseball Free-Agent Case, N.Y. Times, Oct. 19, 1983, at D25.
[15] Smith, at 23.

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