by Mike Hall, Aug 9, 2007

Some years down the road, after Tom Glavine throws his last pitch—one that will probably clock in the low 80-mph range and just barely paint the lower outside corner—he will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

His Cooperstown plaque will duly note the 300-plus victories, two Cy Young awards, five 20-win seasons and more from his impeccable career. But what is likely to be little noted, if mentioned at all, are Glavine’s impeccable union credentials.

Glavine, who pitched 16 years for the Atlanta Braves and is now in his fifth season with the New York Mets, earned his 300th win this past Sunday against the Cubs. Just 23 pitchers have hit the 300-victory mark in major league history.

The Massachusetts native carries with him the lessons and values he learned in a working class family. His father, Fred, is a retired construction worker. Glavine has been one of the most active and prominent ball players in the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). He first served as the player representative for the Braves starting in 1991 and has spent more than a dozen years as the player rep for the entire National League.

During the 1994–1995 baseball strike that alienated many fans who found it difficult to sympathize with well-paid players, Glavine was the most publicly outspoken player for the union’s position.

Owners were demanding a salary cap, the end of salary arbitration, restrictions on free agency and other career controls. Also fresh on the minds of players were several recent cases in which baseball owners were found to have colluded to hold down salaries—including a case settled in 1990 where owners agreed to pay the players $280 million in damages. Said Glavine at a March 1995 press conference:

These guys [the owners] are getting more than they every thought they were going to get. So why is it so hard to get it a deal? The answer to that question is, they’ve always wanted more, more to the point where they have total control over players’ careers.

Player solidarity helped win that strike—no major league player crossed a picket line to play with the 1995 spring training replacement players the owners put on the fields in Florida and Arizona. But a settlement was reached before opening day.

Even though Glavine was booed and cursed by fans after the strike, especially in Atlanta, he continued his union activities during the 2002 negotiations and today continues to serve as the National League players rep.

In a 2002 Sporting News article Fred Glavine said of his son:

I don’t how he got that deeply involved. I guess it was because he was brought up to always stand up for what he believed in.

After Glavine notched his 300th win, MLB.com columnist Mike Bauman wrote:

His leadership role in the players’ union was so visible that during some of baseball’s labor disputes, he became a target for some fans’ discontent. But this was Glavine doing what he believed was right and being typically candid about it. The indisputable growth and success of the union can be attributed at least in part to the fact that Glavine played a prominent role.

As a Met, Glavine’s union support goes beyond his MLBPA role. He has made several commercials for the city’s building trades unions who are constructing the Met’s new CitiField ballpark. In commercials aired in the New York area, Glavine praises the quality and safe work performed by the Plumbers and Pipefitters and Carpenters unions.

After Glavine’s 300th victory at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Jeremy Burton wrote on Jspot blog:

But in a bigger sense, it’s worth taking note of Tom Glavine’s active and visible role as a union man. Most Mets fans don’t know that in his 16 years in Atlanta, he was a player rep in the union and a leading shop organizer in the 1994 strike.

 

For N.Y. fans this year, we’ve been treated to a regular series of commercials during Mets games featuring Glavine promoting the N.Y. building trades unions, the men and women who are building the new CitiField right beyond the walls of Shea Stadium.

 

So here’s a toast to Tom Glavine, for his remarkable achievement, for being a union leader in one of America’s most unusual unions, and for being a voice of the larger union movement in N.Y. and proudly affiliating himself with all the other men and women who work in solidarity.

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