December 23, 1975: The Reserve Clause Is Killed

Peter Seitz

December 23, 1975, 50 years ago: The reserve clause is struck down, changing baseball forever.

The clause -- nothing Christmassy about this -- began in 1879, when the National League instituted it, allowing teams to reserve players for each season, unless a player opted out of his contract and did not play in the league for a year. This allowed the team owners to control salaries, since the players could not play one team owner off another and get higher bids for their salaries.

In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed. To some people in baseball, the reserve clause sounded like a violation of that act. In 1922, in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise, saying, in a 9-0 unanimous vote, baseball was an "amusement," therefore did not constitute "interstate commerce," and therefore antitrust laws did not to apply to it. That ruling has never been overturned by a later Supreme Court ruling.

So opponents of the reserve clause had to find another way to get it struck down. In 1969, the St. Louis Cardinals traded Curt Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies, and, having a home and a business in St. Louis, and believing Philadelphia to be a racist city, he didn't want to go. He contacted the Chairman of the Major League Baseball Players' Association, Marvin Miller, to see what could be done about it.

Curt Flood

Miller decided that the reserve clause was a legitimate basis for negotiation in collective bargaining between players and owners. The case of Flood v. Kuhn went to the Supreme Court in 1972, and the decision was 5-3 in favor of the owners.

Finally, Miller got the team owners to agree to impartial arbitration. What he needed was two players to challenge the clause, by playing the 1975 season without signing a contract. This was because Miller realized that the clause only reserved the player for one year. The owners had always interpreted it to mean the player was reserved until he was released: Even if traded, his new team assumed the reservation.

Marvin Miller

It had to be two players, so that it wouldn't look like one embittered player, as Flood, fairly or not, seemed to be. Both players turned out to be pitchers. Dave McNally had been traded from the Baltimore Orioles to the Montreal Expos, and had determined that 1975 would be his last season, as he planned to retire to his ranch in Montana. So he had nothing to lose.

Andy Messersmith had much to lose. Born on the Jersey Shore in Toms River, and raised in the Orange County suburbs of Los Angeles, the righthander was 29, and had gone 20-6 in helping the Los Angeles Dodgers win the National League Pennant in 1974. He was in position to make a great deal of money if he could put his skills up for bid. But Miller convinced him that striking the reserve clause down was more important. So he played the '75 season with the Dodgers, without a contract, turned 30, and went 19-14.

Andy Messersmith

In an interview with The Sporting News for the 10th Anniversary of the decision, Messersmith said, "It was less of an economic issue at the time than a fight for the right to have control over your own destiny. It was a matter of being tired of going in to negotiate a contract and hearing the owners say, 'OK, here's what you're getting. Tough luck.'"

The owners were terrified. There is one thing that a sports team owner values more than money, and that is control. If the clause were struck down, the owners would have to pay more in salaries, but, from their perspective, the bigger problem was that they would lose some measure of control over the players' fates. They could have compromised, but were too stubborn and set in their ways to do so.

So the decision went to arbitration. A three-man panel was chosen. Miller represented the players. John Gaherin, the chief negotiator of the MLB Player Relations Committee, argued on behalf of the team owners. Together, they found an arbitrator acceptable to both of them: Peter Seitz, a 67-year-old lawyer who had negotiated New York City's labor relations law a decade earlier.

On December 23, the ruling was handed down. Surprising no one, Miller sided with the players, and Gaherin sided with the owners. Seitz had the deciding vote, and he sided with the players, saying:

The grievances of Messersmith and McNally are sustained. There is no contractual bond between these players and the Los Angeles and the Montreal clubs, respectively. Absent such a contract, their clubs had no right or power, under the Basic Agreement, the Uniform Player Contract or the Major League Rules to reserve their services for their exclusive use for any period beyond the renewal year in the contracts which these players had heretofore signed with their clubs...

The leagues involved in these proceedings, without delay, shall take such steps as may be necessary to inform and instruct their member clubs that the provisions of Major League Rules 4-A(a) and 3(g) do not inhibit, prohibit or prevent such clubs from negotiating or dealing with respect to employment with the grievants in this case; also, that Messersmith shall be removed from the reserve list of the Los Angeles Club and McNally from the reserve or disqualified lists of the Montreal Club.

The next day, the owners fired Seitz as arbitrator. But that did nothing to change the official result of his decision: The reserve clause was mortally wounded. It wasn't quite dead, as the owners had the right to appeal. On February 4, 1976, the Seitz decision was upheld in a federal district court. On March 10, it was upheld in a federal appeals court.

Finally, rather than take the apparently inevitable beatdown from the U.S. Supreme Court, the owners decided to make a deal. On July 12, an agreement was reached on a 4-year labor deal, giving players with at least 6 years' play in the major leagues the right to free agency. (This would later be reduced to 5 years.) Finally, on August 2, 1976, the players voted on ratification, and the reserve clause was formally buried.

A few years later, Cardinals owner and Anheuser-Busch beer magnate Gussie Busch met with the man he had traded to unwittingly set all this in motion, Curt Flood. No owner had been more vehement than Busch that the reserve clause had to be maintained, or else baseball would be "destroyed." But Busch told Flood he was right, and the owners were wrong, and apologized to him.

Flood had sacrificed his career for Messersmith and all the players who came after him. Messersmith signed with the Atlanta Braves, for $1 million over 3 years. But he didn't pan out with them, due to injuries. He went 11-11 in 1976, and only 5-4 in 1977. He was traded to the Yankees for 1978, but made only 7 appearances, going 0-3.

The Yankees released him, and, with some irony, he signed as a free agent with the Dodgers. This was possible because their owner, Walter O'Malley, champion of the cheap, had died, and his son, Peter O'Malley, was one of the owners willing to pay big money if he thought it would bring big results. In Messersmith's case, it didn't: He made just 11 appearances, going 2-4, and was done at age 34.

Messersmith later coached at a community college in Northern California, while McNally worked on his ranch and ran a car dealership. Neither worked in professional baseball again.

Seitz died in 1983, Flood in 1997, McNally in 2002, Miller in 2012. As of December 23, 2025, Messersmith is still alive, age 80.

December 31, 1974: The Yankees Hook a Catfish

December 31, 1974, 50 years ago: The era of baseball free agency begins, as the Yankees "hook a Catfish."

James Augustus Hunter was signed out of Perquimans High School in North Carolina by the Kansas City Athletics on June 8, 1964. Team owner Charles O. Finley thought "Jim Hunter" was too ordinary a name, and that he needed a nickname. Charlie asked "Jimmy" (as he was always known to his family) what he liked to do. Jim said he liked to hunt and fish, a common pair of passions for baseball players from rural areas in those days.

So Finley made up a story about how, when he was a boy, Jimmy caught a whole bunch of catfish, and that he had been nicknamed "Catfish Hunter" -- or, sometimes, just "Cat" -- from then on. Of course, no one had ever called him "Catfish" -- or "Cat" -- until June 8, 1964.

Hunter made his debut with the A's in 1965. In 1966, he made the 1st of what turned out to be 8 All-Star Games. The A's moved to Oakland in 1968. That season, Catfish pitched a perfect game. He helped them win the American League Western Division in 1971, and the World Series in 1972, 1973 and 1974. He won the AL Cy Young Award in 1974, leading in both wins (he went 25-12) and ERA. That year, despite Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, Jim Palmer and Nolan Ryan all being in their prime, he was the best pitcher in baseball.

Charlie Finley was so cheap! (How cheap was he?) He was so cheap, he let the best pitcher in baseball get away because he refused to fulfill a part of the man's contract. The contract that Catfish signed for 1974 was for 2 years -- unusual under the still-holding reserve clause -- for $200,000, or $100,000 per year, which, while no longer a record, was still a benchmark for ballplayers.

But not all of that was salary: The contract stipulated that, in 1974 and again in 1975, Finley would make a $50,000 payment to a life insurance annuity. Since Finley had become rich selling insurance, he should have not only understood this, but respected this.

But after the 1974 season, Finley found out he had to pay $25,000 in taxes, due immediately. (Worth about $152,000 in 2024 money.) So he refused to pay the annuity. Catfish, who had been trying to secure his family's post-baseball future, was normally a very even-tempered man, which helped him a lot while pitching. Over this, though, he hit the roof, and appealed to Peter Seitz, Major League Baseball's arbitrator for contract disputes.

On December 16, 1974, foreshadowing the decision he would make a year later, killing the reserve clause, Seitz ruled in Catfish's favor: He was now a free agent, and the 24 teams then in Major League Baseball were all permitted to bid for his services for 1975 and beyond.

Suddenly, the small town of Hertford, in the Inner Banks of North Carolina, a small town of about 2,000 people, 60 miles south of the Class AAA city of Norfolk, Virginia, became the center of the baseball world. Every team, except the San Francisco Giants, bid for Catfish.

The winning bid came from the New York Yankees. Although team owner George Steinbrenner was suspended from operating the team until the 1976 season, general manager Gabe Paul had his permission to offer Catfish $3.35 million over 5 years -- $670,000 per season, a record at the time. (In today's money, about $4.08 million per year. How quaint that now sounds.)

Catfish actually refused 2 higher bids: From the San Diego Padres, because he was tired of being on the opposite coast from home; and from the Kansas City Royals, because he wanted to play on real grass, and Royals Stadium had artificial turf. (In 1993, that stadium was given both real grass and a new name, Kauffman Stadium, both of which it still has.)

To put the figure in perspective: The player who was paid the most for the 1974 season was Hank Aaron, MLB's new all-time home run leader: $240,000. (About $1.46 million in 2024 money.) Catfish's contract had broken the barriers of $250,000 (a quarter of a million), $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 (half a million) and $600,000.

Catfish struggled at first in 1975, losing his 1st 3 games. In fact, his debut, on April 8, 1975, was also Frank Robinson's 1st game as baseball's 1st black manager, and he hit a home run off Catfish to give the Cleveland Indians the win. But Catfish settled down, and went 23-12. It was his 5th straight season of at least 21 wins.

But all that pitching began to wear on his arm. He went just 17-15 in 1976, still helping the Yankees win the Pennant. He was injured for much of the 1977 and 1978 seasons, but a procedure on his shoulder allowed him to win 6 straight games down the stretch in 1978. After being hit hard in Game 2 of the 1977 World Series, but the Yankees won the Series anyway, Catfish won the clinching Game 6 of the 1978 World Series.

After the 1979 season, the 5th and last year of his contract, Catfish retired. He had always intended to, but his bad shoulder took the decision out of his hands. His final record was 224-166. After that season, the Houston Astros signed Ryan to the 1st contract to break the $1 million-per-season barrier.

Jim "Catfish" Hunter was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987. Charlie Finley has never been elected. Then again, neither have George Steinbrenner, Gabe Paul and Peter Seitz.

Catfish died in 1999, like Lou Gehrig from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease now named for Gehrig.

In the 2023 season, the New York Mets paid Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, 2 pitchers whose statistics will make them sure Hall-of-Famers if they don't do anything stupid like Pete Rose did, record salaries of $43,333,333 each. In 1974, that would have been $7.1 million, or 10.6 times Catfish Hunter's former record salary.