Scandal: Owners Collusion in 80's

[TβG]

this may have been discussed before but i pulled this tid-bit off of fox sports this morning: 

6. MLB owners collude vs. free-agent baseball players.

Jack Morris was the winningest pitcher in baseball in the 1980s, peaking in 1986, after winning 20 games the previous season. The free agent Morris had to agree to salary arbitration with the Tigers. That's because he was turned down by every other team. He even offered himself to the Yankees in a deal that was impossible to refuse. He told Boss George Steinbrenner to just name the price! He said he would sign a one-year contract, with his salary determined by an arbitrator Steinbrenner said at the time it wouldn't be fair to his free-agent pitcher Ron Guidry, whose contract wasn't negotiated yet.

Andre Dawson, Tim Raines and Carlton Fisk were just three of the big-time free agent players who couldn't get a contract. The owners conspired to bring down big free-agent contracts by what the courts would soon rule as collusion. In the years following, small-market owners stopped pretending that there was a level playing field with the richest teams, and today's system is the result.

link:  http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/3594758?GT1=6444

[Shooty]

This is in Ken Burn's Baseball as well.  I don't think that this is much of a secret in the baseball world. 

Interesting nonetheless.

[RedBarron]

Dawson showed up to the cubs spring training camp in 1987 with a blank contract.

All the cubs had to do was fill in the dollar amount.

For some odd reason I think they dicked him and only gave him $500,000.  It turned into a great 6 year run for the Hawk.  Before it was said and done, he crept into the upper level of salaries.