Jim Holt gone at the age of 74

Jim Holt

James William Holt was born on May 27, 1944 in Graham, NC and passed away at the age of 74 on March 29, 2019 in Burlington, NC. The youngest of six children, Jim Holt learned to play baseball in high school and after graduation had tryouts with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cleveland Indians. When these tryouts didn’t attract any pro ball offers and opportunities in Graham pretty much limited to working in a flour or timber mill, Holt decided to join the Army in 1963 and intended to make it a career.

This Day in Twins History – Baseball Forever Changed – December 23, 1975

Messersmith, AndyMcNally, Dave 2In a decision announced on December 23, 1975, arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that pitchers Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith were free agents because the reserve clause could not bind them to a team forever. David McNally actually retired after the 1975 season and never played baseball again while Messersmith became a free agent and signed a three-year deal with the Atlanta Braves for a grand total of $1 million that included a $400,000 signing bonus.

Several court appeals were rejected, forcing the owners into collective bargaining on the issue. Take a moment to read “The Demise of the Reserve Clause” by Stew Thornley.

Baseball-reference.com write-up on the reserve clause

How Curt Flood Changed Baseball and Killed His Career in the Process

This Day in Twins History – November 6, 1976

After having a season for the ages (still holds AL record for most wins and saves in the same season) with the Minnesota Twins going 17-5 with 20 saves and a 3.01 ERA in 167.2 innings, reliever Bill Campbell (Soup) becomes the first player in MLB to cash in on the new free-agent system. The reliever signs with the Red Sox for big money, a four-year deal for  one-million dollars after being paid $23,000 by the Twins for the 1976 season. How did free agency come into play anyway?

The Reserve Clause, it doesn’t sound that bad, right? But what it really did was to tie a player to the ballclub that originally signed him for as long as the team wished to pay him for his services. It was a paragraph in each player’s contract that allowed a baseball team to keep him indefinitely until he was sold, traded or released. It was part of baseball’s antitrust exemption and allowed the team to renew his contract the following year even if the player refused to sign. The players insisted the renewal was good for one year; owners said it could be invoked indefinitely.

 

Curt Flood

After the 1969 season, 14-year outfielder Curt Flood was traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies. Flood appealed in vain to commissioner Bowie Kuhn to be declared a free agent, then sued for it, writing that he was not property to be bought and sold regardless of his wishes and that “any system that produces that result violates my basic right as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States.” On June 19, 1972, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 against him.

After the 1974 season Oakland A’s pitcher Catfish Hunter claimed that the Oakland A’s owner Charles O. Finley had violated a portion  of his contract and an arbitrator agreed allowing Hunter to sign with any team of his choice and on December 31, 1974 signed a five-year $3.75 million contract with the New York Yankees. Those damn Yankees spent big money even back then.

Unhappy with their contracts, pitchers Andy Messersmith, 30, of the Dodgers and Dave McNally, 33, of the Expos played the 1975 without signing contracts and when the season ended they declared themselves free to sign with whom they pleased. A three-man panel made up of an owners representative, a players representative and an independent arbitrator, Peter Seitz heard the case. You can guess how the owners rep and players rep voted and then Seitz cast his vote in favor of the players making them free agents. The baseball owners quickly fired Peter Seitz and appealed their case in Federal Court but in February of 1976 they lost their appeal. In the spring of 1976 after instituting a spring training player lock-out the owners and players finally agreed on a free agency system. McNally never benefited from the system retiring from baseball before the 1976 season began but Messersmith signed a 3-year, $1.75 million contract that contained “renewal clauses after each season” and Braves owner Ted Turner  stated that “Messersmith will never be traded, he will be a Brave as long as I am”. However; after two seasons in Atlanta where Messersmith put up a 16-15 record the Braves sold him to the New York Yankees who kept him for one year before releasing him, Messersmith with his tail between his legs returned to the Dodgers in 1979 but in August the Dodgers said they had seen enough and Messersmith’s big league career was history. I guess you can make a case that paying big bucks for multi-years to free agent pitchers didn’t work back then and seldom works now. Keep this in mind when you get after the Twins brain-trust to pay big money for a free agent pitcher.

Sports Illustrated did a rather lengthy piece about the 1976 MLB free agent class back in their April 16, 1990 issue called “the first to be free“.

Check out the other Twins events that occurred on November 6th in our Today in Twins History page.

The Twins and their trades

With the World Series now in the books all the teams in major league baseball are reviewing what went wrong and what they can do to make their teams better for 2013 and beyond. Two quick ways to solve some problems are by signing free agents or by making some trades. Free agency is relatively new to baseball and came into play as part of baseball’s 1976 collective bargaining agreement and changed the landscape of baseball forever.  Thanks to players like Curt Flood, Catfish Hunter, Andy Messersmith, and Dave McNally players were no longer tied forever to the team that signed them to their first contract.

Baseball trades however; have taken place since baseball began. Today, outside of players that were drafted this past season and players that have no-trade clauses in their contracts, any player currently under contract can be sent packing in hopes of improving the team’s record. Trades sound simple, all you have to do is to agree on what you are willing to give up to get what you want. But that is easier said then done. In the past, trades were much easier to make than they are today, the money involved was much smaller and very few players had multi-year contracts. In the past, most trades were made strictly to improve the product on the field but in today’s world baseball trades may be made for a variety of reasons including player performance on and off the field, salaries, length of contracts, arbitration, trade demands by the player, medical issues, legal concerns, up-coming free agency deadlines and even the teams fan base needs to be considered because trading a popular player can raise all kinds of havoc with ticket sales.

The Twins made their first trade back on June 1, 1961 when owner and GM Calvin Griffith agreed to send 3B Reno Bertoia and pitcher Paul Giel to the Kansas City A’s in return for outfielder Bill Tuttle and since that time the Twins have made 276 trades, some have turned out great and others have been nothing to brag about. We all think we can make better trades than our current teams GM can but then again it is always easy to be an arm-chair quarterback and to be able to spend other people’s money.

So what about the Minnesota Twins trading history? Over the years the Twins have traded the most frequently with the Cleveland Indians (20 times) and only traded once with the Tampa Bay Rays and there are more than just a few fans that will tell you that they wish that the Twins had never traded with Tampa, but that is a whole different story. The Twins have not been able to make a deal with the Kansas City Royals since 1978, that is 34 years ago, what is up with that? I have put together a chart showing how many trades the Twins have made with each of the other teams and in which decade the deals were made.

Team 60s 70s 80s 90s 00s 2010s Last Deal Total
D-Backs 0 0 0 2 0 0 2009 2
Braves 1 0 0 2 0 0 1997 3
Orioles 0 2 4 2 0 1 2010 9
Red Sox 3 1 3 3 5 1 2012 16
Cubs 1 3 1 4 2 0 2006 11
WSox 1 3 5 0 0 1 2012 10
Reds 5 1 0 2 2 0 2006 10
Indians 7 2 6 4 0 1 2011 20
Rockies 0 0 0 2 2 2 2011 6
Tigers 0 5 7 1 1 1 2011 15
Marlins 0 0 0 1 1 0 2005 2
Astros 2 0 5 1 0 0 1999 8
Royals 0 2 0 0 0 0 1978 2
Angels 5 3 2 0 1 1 2010 12
Dodgers 3 6 4 1 0 0 1995 14
Brewers 2 4 0 1 3 1 2011 11
Mets 1 1 6 2 3 0 2008 13
Yankees 1 2 4 1 1 0 2003 9
A’s 5 2 2 0 2 0 2009 11
Phillies 4 5 3 2 1 0 2003 15
Pirates 2 1 0 3 0 1 2012 7
Padres 0 1 4 0 2 0 2003 7
Giants 0 1 3 3 2 0 2003 9
Mariners 0 3 4 3 3 0 2008 13
Cards 1 3 4 0 2 0 2002 10
Rays 0 0 0 0 1 0 2007 1
Rangers 2 4 2 1 1 0 2008 10
BJays 0 1 2 1 2 0 2007 6
Nats/Expos 0 4 4 3 2 1 2010 14
46 60 75 45 39 11   276

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