WThe 1994 World Series would have been the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1994 season, but it was canceled on September 14 of that year due to a strike by the MLB Players Association that started on August 12. It was only the second time in MLB history that a World Series was not played in a given season.
WThe bonus rule was a rule instituted by Major League Baseball in 1947 that prevented teams from assigning certain players to farm teams. The rule stipulated that when a major league team signed a player to a contract in excess of $4,000, the team was required to keep that player on their 25-man active roster for two full seasons. Any team that failed to comply with the rule lost the rights to that player's contract, and the player was then exposed to the waiver wire. Once a player remained with the team for two full seasons, he could be assigned a farm team without repercussions. The rule went through several variations until it was finally abolished in 1965, when the Major League Baseball draft was initiated.
WDonald Martin Fehr is the executive director of the National Hockey League Players Association. He became nationally prominent while serving as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1983 to 2009.
WCurtis Charles Flood was an American baseball player. He was a center fielder who played 15 seasons in the major leagues for the Cincinnati Redlegs, St. Louis Cardinals, and Washington Senators. Flood was a three-time All-Star, a Gold Glove winner for seven consecutive seasons, and batted over .300 in six seasons. He led the National League (NL) in hits (211) in 1964 and in singles, 1963, 1964, and 1968. Flood also led the National League in putouts as center fielder four times and in fielding percentage as center fielder three times. He retired with the third most games in center field (1683) in NL history, trailing Willie Mays and Richie Ashburn.
WDavid Arthur McNally was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a left-handed pitcher from 1962 through 1975, most notably as a member of the Baltimore Orioles dynasty that won four American League pennants and two World Series championships between 1966 and 1971. A three-time All-Star, McNally won 20 or more games for four consecutive seasons from 1968 through 1971. He was one of four 20-game winners for the 1971 Orioles.
WJohn Alexander "Andy" Messersmith is a former Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher. During a 12-year baseball career, he pitched for the California Angels (1968–72), Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves (1976–77) and the New York Yankees (1978). As a member of the Dodgers, he appeared in the 1974 World Series.
WMarvin Julian Miller was an American baseball executive who served as the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) from 1966 to 1982. Under Miller's direction, the players' union was transformed into one of the strongest unions in the United States. 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." Miller was selected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in December 2019, for induction in 2020.
WThe highest-paid player in Major League Baseball (MLB) from the 2018 Major League Baseball season is Los Angeles Angels' Center Fielder Mike Trout with an annual salary of $35.54 million on a 12-year contract for $426,500,000. MLB does not have a hard salary cap, instead employing a luxury tax which applies to teams whose total payroll exceeds certain set thresholds for a given season. Free agency did not exist in MLB prior to the end of the reserve clause in the 1970s, allowing owners before that time to wholly dictate the terms of player negotiations and resulting in significantly lower salaries. Babe Ruth, widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players ever, earned an estimated $856,850 over his entire playing career. When asked whether he thought he deserved to earn $80,000 a year, while the president, Herbert Hoover, had a $75,000 salary, Ruth famously remarked, "What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did."