Koufax–Drysdale holdout

Prior to the 1966 Major League Baseball season, from February 28 to March 30, future Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, star pitchers for the Los Angeles Dodgers, staged a joint holdout in which the pair demanded a fair negotiation and better contract terms from their team's front office.

A player was not allowed to negotiate via a third-party (i.e. an agent) and if they did not accept a salary offered by the team, they had no other option but to threaten to quit.

Within the Los Angeles Dodgers, the front office under Walter O'Malley was particularly tough, with a strict policy of negotiating with directly with the player themselves.

[4] After holding out and after days of tense negotiations, Koufax finally came down to $70,000 and signed with the Dodgers just before the team was to leave for spring training.

However, soon after his signing, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner published a story by sportswriter Bob Hunter incorrectly stating that Koufax threatened to quit if he did not get a $90,000 salary.

[5] Angered at the fact that the story had painted him as greedy, Koufax responded in an interview with Frank Finch of the Los Angeles Times that he never asked for $90,000, saying: "I've been hurt by people I thought were my friends."

During the first week of spring training, still angered and embarrassed by the way he had been treated, he approached Shirley Povich of The Washington Post, Milton Gross of the New York Post, and Joe Reichler of the Associated Press and told them his side of the story which, due to Koufax's normal quiet nature, caused a media frenzy.

In 1964, he received a higher salary than Koufax had without any resistance or animosity from the team's front office despite his numbers having dropped from the previous season.

[1] Before Koufax reached his potential, Drysdale had been the ace of the pitching staff and was favored by manager Walter Alston.

Ginger Drysdale, who had previously worked as a model and actress and was once a member of the Screen Actors Guild, suggested to the pair that they negotiate together in order to get what they wanted.

[12][13] In a highly unusual move for the time, they were represented by entertainment lawyer J. William Hayes, Koufax's business manager.

Instead, both signed to appear in the movie Warning Shot, starring David Janssen, in case the holdout extended into the season.

In his 1966 autobiography, Koufax wrote that he was discouraged by the reception he and Drysdale got from a large segment of the fan base during the holdout: It was astonishing to me to learn that there were a remarkably large number of American citizens who 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... Just take what the nice man wants to give you, get into your uniform, and go a fast 25 laps around the field.

[1]In contrast to the front office, both players agreed to stay clear of the press or making statements during the holdout and to keep as low a profile as possible.

[14] According to Drysdale, former teammates such as Johnny Podres would call on occasion and urge the players to set aside their differences and come to spring training which they suspected was due to Bavasi putting them up to it.

[15] When the holdout began, O'Malley explained his opposition to negotiating with via a third party: "I admire the boys' strategy and we can't do without them, even for a little while.

[16] O'Malley also said that, "Those two boys are splendid fellows, but once you sign two players as an entry, what is to stop the entire team from negotiating on a collective basis?

"[17] Hayes, meanwhile, unearthed a state law which made it illegal to extend personal service contracts in California beyond seven years, a law which resulted from the case of De Havilland v. Warner Bros. Pictures; he began to prepare a lawsuit against the Dodgers and to challenge the reserve clause, later saying that if the pitchers had been successful in challenging baseball's reserve clause, they would have been "the Abraham Lincolns of the game."

[21] Koufax announced his retirement a few weeks after the end of the World Series, citing the chronic pain in his pitching arm as the reason.

[24] In 1968, when the MLBPA was negotiating their first collective bargaining agreement, the owners, citing the joint holdout between Koufax and Drysdale, wanted protection against players teaming up to hold out.