This is interview 12 in the Raymond Goetz oral history project.
Please tell us your name.
I'm Steve fear.
And tell us a little bit about your career.
Well I went to the University of Kansas for both law school and undergrad.
After graduating KU law in 76 I was a federal court law clerk for two years for Earl O'Connor
in the district of Kansas, Wyandotte County is where the office was.
Following that 1978 I joined the Jolly Walsh law firm in Kansas City, Missouri about a
year after my brother Don fear had left to take a job in New York, which I suspect we
discussed momentarily.
And then I was doing federal court litigation for labor unions and eventually stumbled into
a career in sports.
I worked in baseball for basically a little over 30 years probably as first as a lawyer
for the Players Association, then as an agent for players.
And then I went back to doing work for the MLBPA as outside counsel, but not very far
outside as I like to get joke for many years until my brother and I somehow morphed from
Major League Baseball to the National Hockey League about 10 years ago.
So basically I've had a career in labor law and sports and representation of players in
their unions.
Great.
So when you were in law school at KU, did you take any classes from reguettes?
I did not.
I wish I had.
He had a strong reputation even then.
But I took contract from John Lungstrom in the summer of 73 who later became a federal
judge and I never took labor law.
My third year I was one of the directors of the Legal Aid Clinic and that took up a great
deal of my time.
But I did get to know him just by being around the law school and being involved in law school
activities pretty well.
And of course I was in law school 73 to 76 and 73 is when the paper chase came out.
So that was quite the topic of discussion at least among law students and law professors.
And I know some of my classmates referred to, compared Ray often lovingly I think to
Professor Kingsfield, the John Houseman character.
So I wish I had.
And actually the best story I have about Ray when I was in law school is there was a teacher
or professor of the year award that Mike Davis started that was voted on by the faculty,
and that was a student award that was given out by the students.
And every year at the end of the year, I guess in May, they would have a Saturday morning
breakfast thing at the wheel, famous bar at KU, and to give out the award.
And Ray had won it several years in a row.
And for some reason I showed up for this and Ray was there and Fred Lovitch was there.
And Fred won.
Fred actually may have been the best professor or teacher I ever took a course from.
And Fred obviously had been told you're going to win, you have to show up.
But Ray was there and it was just obvious that when he didn't win, he was just crestfallen.
Very disappointed the faculty had voted someone else professor of the year.
Was Mike Davis the dean at that point?
Yes.
Yeah, I believe.
Well, I don't remember exactly.
Mike had been general counsel of the university for a while and then he was dean.
And then he was back to being a regular professor.
But I think during that time he was dean.
OK.
Did you know Ray Getz as an arbitrator?
I did.
We mentioned my brother who was working at the Jolly Firm when a case came through the
door involving Major League Baseball players and the right to free agency.
And then a year after the players won their case and had the right to become free agents,
had a new collective bargaining agreement.
Don was hired as general counsel of the MLBPA.
And a year or two after that, I know I was already working at the Jolly Firm.
So it must have been 1978 or later.
MLB and the MLBPA were looking for a new arbitrator.
And Don asked about Ray.
And I said that I hadn't tried cases before Ray, but I knew him well for law school and
that many of the Jolly Walsh lawyers had had cases before him as an arbitrator and
thought very highly of him.
And eventually MLBPA and MLB hired him to be their grievance arbitrator.
And do you remember how many grievance arbitrators they had gone through in the prior
seven or eight years?
A few, not exactly.
I could probably find out.
But the funny thing is at the time, I think it was written into the CBA, maybe still is,
they call this arbitrator the permanent arbitrator, which is a bit of an oxymoron because
either side could fire the arbitrator at any time they wanted and start the process to
get a new arbitrator.
But it meant permanent meant that all of the grievances related to the CBA would go to
this one particular arbitrator.
And Ray held that position for a few years.
And the arbitrators that came before Ray were some big time names in labor arbitration.
I mean, Lewis Gill, he may have been the first, I don't know, but I know he was one of the
predecessors. And then just tell to set the table, kind of tell us what
what led to one of the well, the Messersmith case and, you know, how the arbitrators kept
getting fired, basically.
Well, the Messersmith case related to an ancient provision in the uniform players contract,
people think Fred, Kurt Flood won free agency, but he didn't.
Kurt Flood lost his case.
But sometime during the pendency of the Flood era in a new CBA, the players got the right
to have grievances decided by a neutral arbitrator.
And one of the arbitrators was the legendary Peter Sipes.
And the case was basically there was a renewal clause in the uniform players contract that
says if you played out your contract and you don't sign a new contract, I can renew you
for a year under the same terms, which beg the question of, OK, I played out my contract.
You renewed me. Now another year's gone by.
Now I can be a free agent, a term really unknown at the time.
And the owner said, no, no, no, we can just renew you for another year on the same terms
odd, infinite. You can never be free, which, of course, the players objected to.
But there were several players that came down the pipeline that were, in essence, bought off.
In other words, before their case could be heard, the owners offered them a contract that was so
good that the players couldn't turn it down.
Ted Simmons, who was just inducted to the Hall of Fame last year, was one of them.
And they offered him a two year guaranteed contract, which was at six figures, which was
unheard of at the time.
And he signed. But finally, there were two players that didn't.
One of them was Andy Messersmith, who'd been with the Dodgers.
The other was Dave McNally, who'd spent most of his career with the Orioles, but I think was
then with the Montreal Expos.
And so the grievance was filed.
It was finally ripe to be heard.
The owners went to federal court in Kansas City seeking to get a judge to enjoin the
arbitration proceeding on the theory that arbitrator didn't have authority to hear the case.
And that's how my brother got involved in baseball, because Marvin Miller and Dick Moss, who'd
come from the Steelworkers, were working at the MLBPA and they hired the Steelworkers lawyers in
Kansas City. So Don got to work on that case.
The arbitrator said, go try the arbitration and then come back to me if you're unhappy.
Indeed, they tried the arbitration.
Peter Seitz was the Abraham Lincoln of Major League Baseball players.
He freed the slaves, as some said, and said they did have a right to become free agents.
The owners went back to federal court and eventually lost the case.
The arbitration decision was upheld and Peter Seitz was fired because they didn't want him to
hear any more cases after that.
How long did Ray Getz serve as baseball's permanent arbitrator?
I think about three years, three or four.
And let's talk about some of the important cases that he heard.
And you were kind enough to share with me a letter that you and your brother wrote after Ray had died.
And so let's just go down the list of cases you list there.
Tell us about the Brooks case.
Brooks was UB Brooks of the New York Mets.
Maybe it should be Brooks and Lynch because another player was also involved in the grievance, Ed Lynch, a pitcher.
And the MLBPA, and I believe the 1980 or 81 CBA, we called it the Basic Agreement, had negotiated for the
first time a minor league minimum salary of sorts.
And it was for players who were on the 40-man roster and had been on the 40-man roster for at least the
second year, but were still in the minor leagues.
And so therefore earning a minor league salary.
And the provision said that your minor league salary will be at least, I don't remember what it was, ten thousand
dollars or probably or something like that.
And the Mets negotiated contracts with Brooks and Lynch that tried to get around those rules.
It gave them a different salary for minor league service, maybe a higher salary for major league service in
exchange. And the players challenged it and it went before Ray Getz and he ruled that, no, this is a
collective bargain, collectively bargained term.
And your minimum salary has to be what is in the Basic Agreement, not what is in the players individually
signed contracts.
And Bob Horner, which I think maybe was Ray's first case as permanent arbitrator.
May well have been. The Horner case was a very unusual case, too.
He was drafted high and had a huge signing bonus, as is common.
But what was unusual about Bob's signing is that he signed a major league contract at the time he signed
following the draft, meaning he would be under a major league contract very soon and would have limited
time in the minors.
Then the question came about a couple, maybe three years later.
What would they have to tender him in order to keep him under reserve?
And there was a maximum cut rule in baseball, which meant you couldn't pay a player less than 20 percent.
Excuse me, you couldn't tender him a contract for less than 20 percent less than what he had earned the year
before. And so the question is, what did he earn before?
Was his signing bonus out of the draft part of the major league contract.
And arbitrator gets ruled that, yes, that signing bonus had to be amortized over the length of Horner's
previous MLB contract, which included some service in the minors.
And therefore, for maximum cut purposes, the signing bonus was part of the figure the clubs had to meet in
order to keep Horner under reserve.
And in that case, I think Horner also made a claim that because of the violation of that rule, he was
automatically a free agent, which I think Ray rejected.
Is that right?
I haven't read it in a while, but that sounds right.
Yes.
And maybe the most important and certainly most still in the news decision related to the
Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins.
Tell us about that one.
Indeed, Ferguson Jenkins was arrested, I believe, in Toronto for having, I believe, a small quantity of
marijuana in his luggage.
The commissioner of baseball asked Ferguson to come before him and answer questions.
He declined to do it on advice of counsel.
And Bowie Kuhn said, well, then you're suspended, although with pay up until the time when this
matter is resolved.
The players grieved it.
Discipline under the basic agreement had to be for just cause.
And Ray Getz ruled for Ferguson Jenkins and the Players Association.
It was unclear exactly why he was being suspended, but he was either being suspended because he was
arrested or because he refused to answer the commissioner's questions, which of course, their
position was, hey, I've got a criminal case to try.
I don't want to compromise the case by giving testimony right now.
Wait till it's over and then decide what you want to do.
And Ray said the suspension was invalid.
He said the player is being disciplined even though he is being paid during the suspension because
being able to participate in games is important to a future hall of famer like Ferguson Jenkins.
Every game he misses damages him.
It damages his team.
The charge of possession was in and of itself was insufficient to justify a suspension.
And that a player should not have that any effect to MLB's business.
That was one of their arguments that we have to punish somebody arrested right away because
otherwise it will hurt us for the fans.
That that was pretty ephemeral and not sufficient to justify the suspension and
that the player shouldn't have to choose between presenting the best defense against the
criminal charge and potential discipline by the employer, in this case, MLB.
Another thing that was very interesting about that case is there was a dissent.
MLB had and still has what we call a party arbitrator system where there is a panel of
arbitrators, a neutral, someone from the union and someone from MLB.
And in virtually every case, probably in every case, the decisions are all two to one.
The side that loses says, I dissent.
But in almost no cases do they say anything else.
In this case, MLB was so outraged by the decision that Ray Griebe, then the head of the
MLB's labor arm, wrote a five page dissenting opinion about how terrible the decision was.
And I don't know if there's ever been another instance in which that's happened.
Yeah, despite the dissent, though, baseball, MLB did not fire Ray then.
Do you know anything about why that was?
I mean, that seems given their past firing of at least five permanent arbitrators before Ray in
eight years or so, it seems odd that they would have been irritated enough to dissent but not fired him.
Perhaps. But I think they eventually did fire him, although my memory and my brother's
memory of it isn't crystal clear.
What happened after one of the decisions was that they told him they were very upset and that they either
were going to fire him or might think about firing him.
And my recollection is that immediately thereafter, Ray tendered his resignation on a matter of principle.
If you don't want me around, I'm not going to stay around, which I thought was a pretty classy thing to do.
Right. And so the last case mentioned in the condolence letter you wrote was Tidro.
Tell us about that one.
The rule was that there was something of a basic agreement that the terms of the uniform players contract
apply to every player. But you can have special covenants like a signing bonus or a guarantee clause or a
performance bonus, etc.
And if the special covenant is of a benefit to the player.
But in Tidro case, the club negotiated a provision, a provision, I don't remember exactly what it was, that was
not a net benefit to the player, that it was something that benefited the club.
And arbitrator gets ruled that that provision was invalid to the extent you can
deviate from the uniform players contract or have provision in addition
to the terms of the UPC, that you can only do so if that covenant benefits the player.
And actually, there is one not to think, since we obviously didn't
win every case the union tried before Ray.
I should probably talk about a case that we lost.
And it was, I believe, one of the last cases that he tried.
But it related to the 1981 players strike.
And there were a handful of players who had been on the disabled list both before, during and after the 50 day
strike that occurred in the summer of 1981.
And the argument was, hey, I got a guarantee clause.
Hey, I didn't strike. I couldn't play anyway.
I was on the disabled list and you couldn't have played me if you want to.
So I should be paid.
But Ray ruled in favor of the clubs.
He said, no, there's strong solidarity of the union during the strike.
There's no reason to believe any of these players wouldn't have struck if they had been healthy.
And therefore, they should have their pay dock for the time missed during the strike, just like the players who weren't injured.
Right. Do you have any idea off the top of your head how many cases Ray heard and decided while he was the permanent arbitrator?
No, I just read it.
I think it was over 20, but I'm not really sure.
So in the four or so years that he was permanent arbitrator, how much of his time would have been taken up by baseball?
I can't give you a percentage, but a fair amount.
Certainly, if four or five cases a year that are tried, each of them has at least a couple of days of hearing, probably.
And brief writing and brief submissions and reading records and writing opinions, obviously, would be involved as well.
So after he was permanent arbitrator, then Ray joined the ranks of the salary arbitrators for baseball.
Is that right? That's right.
And I tried and won a case in front of him.
It was one of my favorite cases and also one of David Cohn's favorite cases.
That was the player David Cohn who pitched for the Royals and Yankees briefly for the Red Sox at the end of his career and also for the Blue Jays World Series team in 1992.
And Cohn had been in his second year.
He had this marvelous season where he was 20 and three with a fantastic ERA, et cetera and so forth.
But he was not eligible for salary arbitration after the second year.
You had to get three in to be eligible for salary arbitration.
And the Mets took a pretty hard line and paid him a little bit over the minimum, but not much.
And so the following year in 1989, he was good, but nowhere near as great as he'd been in 1988 when he had, I think he finished second or third in the Cy Young voting.
So we went in at an aggressive number.
It was around, I think it was 1.3 million.
I think the clubs were in at 850 going from memory here.
And our argument was that even though the salary arbitration criteria focused on what the player had done in the last year, that that wasn't the only thing and that the players had
more or less taken advantage of him in the 1989 contract by not paying him for the value they received in 88 because that's what the rules allowed them to do, which was fine.
But now you should pay him and you should pay him a lot because you owe him for what he did during 1988 that you hadn't fairly compensated him for.
Salary arbitration are just decisions as to what the numbers should be.
They don't explain, you don't explain, the arbitrators do not explain their reasoning.
But David won the case, Ray ruled in his favor, and it was a lot of fun.
And in baseball arbitration, the arbitrator has two choices, as I understand it, either picks the clubs offer or the players, is that right?
Correct. Correct. No opinion. Just pick one number or the other.
Which number do you think better represents the appropriate salary?
And any other things you can remember about Ray's time as a salary arbitrator?
Not really, just that the same things you would say about him in general as the grievance arbitrator and the salary arbitrator that at least
from my perspective, and I think from a lot of the management people too, he was very, very respected because of his
fierce intellect, because he was perceived to be very fair.
I know we were always conscious of where did the arbitrators come from and Ray certainly had, as I understand it,
a management background, but you never had the sense that he tilted one way or the other.
I thought he was very open to the players and to the unions.
He was not afraid of getting fired and he was a guy you always wanted to appear before if you had the opportunity.
Other than recommending him to Don,
did you ever recommend gets to any other parties or people?
I can't say that I did. I can't say that anybody ever asked me.
Okay.
But I would have said yes.
Yeah. Did you ever have any interactions with Ray in various professional capacities that he held with either the ABA's labor camp or the
IRRA chapter here in Kansas City?
No, I really didn't.
Did you ever go to his home?
I think I was in his home once. It seems like it was 1500 learned or something. I can't remember the situation.
But I think there was something at his home once. I don't remember what it was.
But the one time I went to his home, I was in his home.
But I think there was something at his home once. I don't remember what it was.
But the one thing about his home that I liked that I heard from Mike Davis was that letter you mentioned, which I assume will donate to Spencer Library as well, that after Ray died, his widow had framed the letter and hung it.
So that made me feel good.
Yeah, that's great.
Do you remember when you heard that Ray had died?
Shortly after it happened, I don't really remember where I was or exactly how I heard.
Do you remember what it made you feel like at all?
Just sad.
Losing one of the best ones.
I mean, we did have
even after Ray, we had the privilege of appearing before some great arbitrators, Tom Roberts and George Nicolau among them,
who were also gone.
But
there were some great arbitrators when we appeared before because we were lucky enough to be associated with the MLBPA in part,
and none of them any better than Ray, I would say.
Great. Any other memories that you have of Ray you want to share?
No, I think we've pretty much covered it.
He was a very dynamic man.
So early missed.
Thank you.