FanHouse Marvin Miller

Marvin Miller, the iconic former head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, hurled some serious invective at Major League Baseball, the federal government, current union leadership and the media for their roles in what he termed a "witch hunt" aimed at professional athletes.

Miller defended the union's decision not to destroy the 2003 urine test results that resulted in Alex Rodriguez's outing as a steroid user, but, during an interview with ESPN.com, said that he would never have allowed the tests to be done in the first place.

In December, when Marvin Miller received just three of 12 votes from the Baseball Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee, I argued that it was bad for Cooperstown. Miller's work with the Players Association drastically changed the face of baseball and the future of the game and any serious effort to recognize the most important members of the game's history has to include him.

The likelihood that he'll ever get in took another shot when Miller sent a letter to the Baseball Writers Association of America asking that he not be nominated for enshrinement again.

"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. It is an insult to baseball fans, historians, sports writers and especially to those baseball players who sacrificed and brought the game into the 21st century. At the age of 91 I can do without a farce."

The BBWAA has only a share of the nominating process and the Hall's president, Jeff Idelson, said that he would advise the voters but that Miller couldn't avoid nomination if that's what the committee decides. They don't vote again for two years and there will likely be a change in the configuration of the committee before that time.

The 2008 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot was released last week but the results of that voting, done by the Baseball Writers Association of America, won't be announced until early next year. While the next month will see much debate about the credentials of Mark McGwire, Goose Gossage and Jim Rice, there was nary a peep about the slate of candidates considered by the Veterans Committee in advance of today's announcement of five Hall of Famers.

If there was perhaps they would have avoided the monumental error they made by electing former commissioner Bowie Kuhn but not Marvin Miller. The process used for electing veterans was changed this year from the full group of living members of the Hall to three panels, one for former players, one for managers and umpires and one for executives and pioneers. Kuhn was elected by the latter group.

Miller, who got three of 12 votes from the management panel (seven current or former management execs, two former players and three writers), wasn't thrilled by the results.

"It's demeaning, the whole thing, and I don't mean just to me. It's demeaning to the Hall and demeaning to the people in it."

It's demeaning because it ignores half the story of why Kuhn matters to the game of baseball. That half is Miller's and deserves telling at baseball's most hallowed ground. Instead the panel tried to rewrite history by leaving Miller on the sidelines.