Bowie Kuhn: The Fifth Commissioner of Baseball
After General William Eckert was sacked at the end of 1968, Bowie Kuhn -- a lawyer who had been counsel to first the National League and then Major League Baseball, was appointed interim commissioner. In 1970, he was given the job with a 7-year contract.
Derided as the "Village Idiot" by legendary Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley (who should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame but is not), Bowie Kuhn served as MLB Commissioner during arguably its most important epoch aside from the founding of the two major leagues, as he oversee the volatile era that saw the end of baseball's reserve clause and the advent of free
agency.
He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame, while his great rival, union boss Marvin Miller (the man who freed the slaves from the reserve clause) has not been.
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