58 Years Ago, Koufax And Drysdale Held Out For A Better Deal
We look back at a seminal moment in MLBPA history, when two star pitchers for the Dodgers did not show up to Spring Training in search of a better deal.
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . Back in 1966, MLB players were not permitted to employ agents to negotiate their contracts or represent their interests. Players had to speak with general managers directly if they had an issue with their contract or salary. Sandy Koufax, however, strongly believed that players had the right to representation by an agent and that there should be an arbitration process to resolve disputes. Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi stood firmly against this point of view.
“If I gave in and began negotiating baseball contracts through an agent, then I set a precedent that’s going to bring awful pain to general managers for years to come, because every salary negotiation with every humpty-dumpty fourth-string catcher is going to run into months of dickering,” Bavasi said in 1967 in a Sports Illustrated interview.
. . . Two years after the Koufax/Drysdale holdout, Marvin Miller and the MLBPA negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in professional sports in 1968. Among other things, it raised the Major League minimum salary from $6,000 -- where it had been for 20 years -- to $10,000.
Leading Off
Showdown: Koufax, Drysdale And The Holdout Of 1966
By Bill Pruden
On Oct. 14, 1965, with Game 7 of the World Series against the Minnesota Twins barely under way, Los Angeles Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax found himself “a two pitch pitcher without a second pitch,” as author Jane Leavy later put it. Continually shaking off his catcher John Roseboro when he called for a curveball, an exasperated Roseboro went to the mound where Koufax, pitching on two-days’ rest, admitted that his arm hurt and his curve was not working. After the duo determined that he had no choice but to go with his fastball, Koufax threw a three-hit shutout while striking out 10, as the Dodgers beat the Twins, 2-0, to secure their second World Series title in three years.
It was that triumphant memory that Dodgers fans carried with them through the winter. But as Spring Training approached, there were reports that Koufax and his right-handed pitching partner Don Drysdale would not be reporting on time. Instead, in an era before free agency and the end of the reserve clause, a time of one-year contracts, the best pitching duo in baseball was planning to hold out, reportedly seeking a seemingly unimaginable combined three-year contract that would pay them a total of $1 million. The countless fans who hoped that such reports were only rumors were crushed when on Feb. 28, 1966, Koufax and Drysdale were AWOL as Spring Training began.
The situation was straightforward, if unprecedented. While players had held out before, the Dodgers stars, refusing to allow the team to play one against the other, while also recognizing the impact on the team’s fortunes of losing the two pitchers who had collected three of the last four Cy Young Awards, were doing more, offering baseball’s first lesson in collective bargaining. As one writer later put it, they were “baseball’s first union – a union of two.” While Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi later termed the dual holdout a “gimmick,” he also later admitted that it had worked, although he said that was only because “one of the two was the greatest pitcher I’ve ever seen (and possibly the greatest anybody has ever seen).”
At the same time, the holdout also reflected an increased awareness of the bargaining power the players – especially if offering a united front – might have. This understanding was heightened and harnessed in the coming years by the efforts of Marvin Miller who, ironically, assumed the role of executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) two weeks into the Koufax-Drysdale holdout.
For all the reverence with which Koufax and the late Drysdale are now held, and for all the adulation that they experienced at the height of the Dodgers’ success in the 1960s, the holdout was not well received by the fans or the media. Koufax recalled being discouraged by the response of a large part of the team’s fanbase, later writing that he had been astonished to learn how many people “truly did not believe we had the moral right to quit rather than work at a salary we felt – rightly or wrongly – to be less than we deserved.”
It was of course a different time, one that leaves modern players and fans shaking their heads in wonder. With the reserve clause hanging over their heads, players were victims of a mindset that said they were lucky to be paid to play ball with the implied alternatives being little more than driving a truck or some other comparatively low-level job, forced to take what was offered. Indeed, less recognized or remembered was the fact that another critical contributor to the Dodgers’ success, shortstop Maury Wills, was also holding out as the Dodgers’ 1966 Spring Training began. However, after a meeting with team owner Walter O’Malley that left him “scared to death,” Wills signed the contract put in front of him, recalling that he “didn’t even look at it.”
But the pitching aces did not go down so easily. Despite the lack of public support, Koufax and Drysdale went about their business, giving every indication that they would not starve if the Dodgers did not pay them. Indeed, they signed to appear in an upcoming movie while also agreeing to appear on the television variety show “The Hollywood Palace.”
Meanwhile, as Opening Day drew closer, fans could only speculate on when normality would return, refusing for the most part to consider the possibility that the Dodgers would consider putting a team on the field that did not include the incomparable duo. The very thought was, as Vin Scully observed, “preposterous.” In fact, the defending champions could not mount much of a defense without Koufax and Drysdale, and everyone knew it. Finally, on March 30, the holdout ended, and when word reached a Dodgers team that was in flight from Florida to Los Angeles, it erupted in applause. The season could go on.
And quite a season it was. While Drysdale struggled, Koufax painted a masterpiece in what proved to be his final effort. He finished the 1966 season with a record of 27-9 with a 1.73 ERA. He struck out 317 and threw 27 complete games, the last of which was the pennant clincher, coming on the final day of the season on two days’ rest. It was the last win of his career. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the holdout and the initial effort to secure a three-year contract is that Koufax not only retired at the end of the 1966 season, but he had already decided he would do so, telling reporter Phil Collier in September of 1965 that 1966 would be his last season.
The impact of the holdout represented far more than just a hit to the Dodgers’ piggy bank, although that was substantive. In fact, when the parties came to an agreement, the final resolution, while nowhere near their original demands, resulted in contracts of $125,000 for Koufax and $110,000 for Drysdale. These figures not only represented raises of $40,000 and $30,000 respectively, but left Bavasi, with, in his own words, only a “blood-stained cashbox.”
But arguably more important than the money is the fact that Koufax and Drysdale’s effort was an important step forward for the players and their ultimately successful effort to get out from under the reserve clause and escape from their status as, in the words of Curt Flood, “well-paid slaves.” Indeed, Donald Fehr, who succeeded Miller as the MLBPA executive director, said that Miller often called the Koufax-Drysdale holdout the first key event in the players’ assertion of their labor rights. Miller was happy to acknowledge that it stemmed from the players’ efforts and not the union’s, for in the end, he knew, perhaps better than anyone, that it was the players who made the game what it was – and is.
Bill Pruden is a high school history and government teacher who has been a baseball fan for over six decades. He has been writing about baseball--primarily through SABR sponsored platforms, but also in some historical works--for about a decade. His email address is: courtwatchernc@aol.com.
Nicely written. As an armchair Dodgers Historian, I have read a considerable amount on this topic. It's always refreshing to get a new perspective. I had forgotten that Maury had held out as well.
Thank you. Didn’t know about the holdout.