Miller grew up in a working-class family in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and began his career with positions at various prominent unions.

In 1950, he became a key figure in the organized labor world when he was made the principal economic advisor of United Steelworkers, serving as one of its contract negotiators.

Miller advised St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood in his 1972 Supreme Court challenge against baseball's reserve clause that prevented players from entering free agency.

In 1974, Miller coordinated with players Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally in a bid for free agency that resulted in the abolition of the reserve clause in the 1975 Seitz decision.

In 1992, Red Barber said, "Marvin Miller, along with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, is one of the two or three most important men in baseball history.

His father, Alexander, was a salesman for a clothing company on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and as a youngster, Marvin walked a picket line in a union organizing drive.

He joined the staff of the United Steelworkers in 1950, became its principal economic advisor and assistant to its president, and took part in negotiating contracts.

In March 1966, Miller visited MLB spring training camps in an effort to be democratically elected executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA).

More importantly, the deal brought a formal structure to owner–player relations, including written procedures for the arbitration of player grievances before the commissioner.

Shortly after the 1969 season concluded, Devine sent Flood a terse, two-sentence letter notifying him that he had been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Worse still, Phillies fans had earned a reputation for being virulent racists as was evidenced by the epithets and garbage they hurled at black player Dick Allen.

)[7] At a conference held in his honor at New York University in 2012, Miller recalled what Flood had said to him about Philadelphia before filing the lawsuit: “On his experiences in Philadelphia, he said he had observed that the people at the ballpark, patrons, were as racist as any he had ever met in the south, and he was not going to live there or work there.”[8] Coincidentally, Allen was the player the "Phils" sent to St. Louis as its part of the bargain for Flood.

Flood had chosen to ignore the age-old reserve clause, which prevented him from negotiating with any MLB team until he had sat out a season.

"I told him," recalled Miller, "that given the courts' history of bias towards the owners and their monopoly, he didn't have a chance in hell of winning.

The total 86 exhibition and regular-season games that were missed over the entire 13-day period were never played because the league refused to pay the players for the time they were on strike.

In 1974, Miller used arbitration to resolve a dispute when Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley failed to make an annuity payment as required by Cy Young Award winning pitcher Catfish Hunter's contract.

[15] In 1974, Miller encouraged pitchers Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles to play out the succeeding year without signing a contract.

[17] Miller's hopes were frustrated for a time as baseball owners engaged in collusion in which they agreed among themselves not to deal with any player who was a free agent.

Miller led the ballplayer's union in two more actions against the Major League owners, the second during 1980 spring training, and the third during the heart of the 1981 regular season.

The 1981 strike, which lasted 50 days, forced the total cancellation of 713 games, and is estimated to have cost both the owners and players $146 million.

Working with MLBPA general counsel, Richard M. Moss, Miller educated the players on trade-union thinking.

)[22] Former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent said upon learning of Miller's death in 2012, "I think he's the most important baseball figure of the last 50 years.

[24] Marvin Miller was succeeded in 1985 by Donald Fehr, who had joined the Major League Baseball Players Association as general counsel in 1977.

Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig told the Associated Press in 2007, "The criteria for non-playing personnel is the impact they made on the sport.

CNN Money writer Chris Isidore described the switch's effect on Miller's candidacy: "Imagine a runner rounding third and heading for home, only to have a last minute rule change move the location of the plate.

[1]On July 11, 2008, The Boston Globe portrayed Miller as disdainful of the realignment of the Hall's Veterans Committee, and as uninterested in the chances of his own enshrinement: I find myself unwilling to contemplate one more rigged Veterans Committee whose members are handpicked to reach a particular outcome while offering a pretense of a democratic vote.

The composition of the new 16-man voting committee was very different from that in 2007, consisting of eight Hall of Famers (seven inducted as players and one as a manager), four media members, and only four executives.

[34] Miller died in November 2012; he was posthumously listed on the Expansion Era ballot for the 2014 class,[35] but received fewer than seven of 16 votes and was again not elected.

[37] The system's time-frames were restructured, with Miller to be evaluated by the Modern Baseball Era Committee, considering candidates whose greatest contributions occurred from 1970 to 1987.

[47] In a statement, Michael Weiner, the executive director of the MLBPA, said: It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of Marvin Miller.