NEW YORK -- Dick Moss, the lawyer who won the arbitration case that created free agency for baseball players and revolutionized pay for professional athletes, has died.He was 93.Moss died Saturday at an assisted-living residence in Santa Monica, California, the Major League Baseball Players Association said Sunday.
He had been in poor health for several years.Hired by union executive director Marvin Miller as general counsel in 1967, Moss argued the 1975 case involving pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally that led to arbitrator Peter Seitz striking down the reserve clause.That provision for a unilateral one-year renewal had been included in every contract since 1878 and had enabled teams to control players by maintaining those agreements could be extended perpetually.Seitz decided on Dec.
23, 1975, the provision meant only a single one-year renewal.His ruling was upheld in U.S.
District Court and by the 8th U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals, where Moss conducted the oral argument on the union's behalf.
The decision impacted all sports across North America and led to collectively bargained provisions for baseball free agency.At the time of the decision, the average Major League Baseball salary was just under $45,000.It rose to $76,000 in 1977 and by 2023 was $4.5 million, a 1,000-fold increase.MLB's revenues increased at a less steep rate, from $163 million in 1975 to more than $11 billion in 2023, a 70-fold rise.“The difference between winning and losing was billions and billions of dollars, maybe tens of billions of dollars,” Moss said at a 25th anniversary party he threw in December 2000.Baseball players' gains were followed closely by other sports, with unions gaining liberalized free agency rights in the NBA in 1976 and the NFL in 1993.Richard Maurice Moss III was born in Pittsburgh on July 30, 1931.
He received degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Law School.After two years in the Army, Moss worked for for a Pittsburgh law firm, becam...