“Lock, stock and barrel”

‘“They owned you, lock, stock and barrel.”

That’s what Dave McNally said to a Baltimore Sun sportswriter in the summer of 1986. He was describing the relationship between major-league teams and players through 1975, the year that he retired from professional baseball and returned to his hometown of Billings, Montana.¹

Everything changed in 1975 when McNally ushered in a tectonic change in the sport he had loved since he was a Little League player in the Magic City in the early 1950s. He created nothing less than a revolution in professional baseball.

Here are some numbers that show the scope of the change McNally was responsible for by taking part in the most wide-sweeping labor decision in professional sports history.

In 1975, when he told the Montreal Expos he was through as a pitcher, the average major-league player salary was $44,676. Adjusted for inflation, that works out to $260,893 in 2024.

The highest-paid player that year was Atlanta’s Hank Aaron, who earned $240,000, equivalent to $1.4 million today.

Compare that to today when the average big-league player draws annual pay of $4.98 million–more than seven times greater than the inflation-adjusted pay of his 1975 counterpart. And salaries for star players keep climbing into the stratosphere. Witness the $70 million bonanza that designated hitter Shohei Ohtani received from the Los Angeles Dodgers, or the $43.3 million awarded to the next two highest-paid players, starting pitchers Max Scherzer of the Texas Rangers and Justin Verlander of the Houston Astros. Ohtani is earning fifty times more than Aaron did, in 2024 dollars, and Scherzer and Verlander are collecting paychecks almost 31 times as large.

Have any of today’s players sent a note of thanks to Jean McNally, the widow of Dave McNally, who died of cancer in Billings in 2002? I doubt it. And did McNally reap any benefit from participating in the Seitz arbitration case of 1975? He got nothing. His top salary as a major leaguer was $115,00.

Instead of cashing in, McNally came back to Montana’s largest city where he joined his older brother, Jim, as co-owner of the Archie Cochrane Ford dealership, previously owned by a younger brother of Detroit Tigers Great Mickey Cochrane. He raised his young, growing family, which eventually included five children, played lots of golf with local people, including some of his boyhood friends as a star junior pitcher and gave back to the community as a volunteer for charities such as Easter Seals and the Muscular Dystrophy organization.

It was all in character for McNally, according to a longtime friend of mine in Billings, Baltimore-born and raised lawyer Bill Lambdin. Lambdin once described McNally to me as a “lunch pail pitcher,” someone who went to the ballpark a few hours before game time, worked out, and, following manager Earl Weaver’s rotation, took the mound every four days for pitching duties. Then, after the game, win or lose, McNally showered and headed for the parking lot where Jean, who had arranged a babysitter to look after their children so she could watch Dave pitch in the Memorial Stadium stands, was waiting. He would get in the car, and Jean would drive them back to their suburban Baltimore home so Dave could get some sleep before a new day in his career dawned.

McNally, unlike some pro athletes today and then, too, was no prima Donna, someone who seeks excess media attention.

Lambdin got insight into McNally’s fundamental nature while watching him in Baltimore during the years when the city worshipped Johnny Unitas and the Colts and the Baltimore Orioles, with their galaxy of pitching stars, McNally among them, and a lineup packed with power hitters, Brooks and Frank Robinson and Boog Powell foremost among them.

Here’s the story of how McNally became involved in the Seitz case, as told by John Helyar in his 1994 book, Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball.

John McHale, president of the Expos, said it had become obvious to some club owners that “some relaxation of the of the reserve clause was needed.” But baseball’s leadership resisted the idea.

The thinking of owners harkened back to “the pleasant, paternal relations with players before Miller came along,” and they still thought of baseball as a “privileged business.”

McHale could see “an accident waiting to happen. Somebody was going to do a number on us.”

Miller, however, wasn’t sure that Messersmith was the “accident” needed for a successful arbitration case. Messersmith was the Dodgers’ ace, and LA had the "means and motivation to sign him.” Would he go the distance on the case?

Also, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley seemed too smart to risk having the reserve system nullified over a no-trade clause, which was Messersmith’s key demand.

So, Miller sat down with Dick Moss, the lawyer for the players association, to discuss strategy. Then Miller remembered: McNally had retired from the Expos, but he still was technically an unsigned player.

Miller found McNally’s home phone number in Billings and began dialing.

The misery of his only season with the Expos, a 3–6 record with a 5.26 earned-run average, was still fresh on McNally’s mind. Thus, when Miller asked him if he was coming back to play, McNally said, “No, never.”

“I’d like to add your name to the grievance as insurance if Andy decides to sign a new Dodger contract,” Miller said.

McNally didn’t hesitate.

“If you need me, I’m willing to help,” he said.

When O’Malley heard McNally had been added to the grievance, it changed his thinking about how to deal with Messersmith.

“He had been willing to give him the moon to thwart a union test case. Now Miller had one anyway. There was no reason to capitulate to Messersmith,” Helyar wrote.

John Gaherin, the top negotiator for the club owners, made a frantic call to McHale.

“Go out to Montana. For Christ’s sake, get the bastard drunk and sign him,” Gaherin said.

A stunned McNally picked up the phone one day that summer and heard McHale at the other end.

“I happened to be passing through Billings,” he said. “Can we sit down and talk about your situation?”

They met the next day at a hotel restaurant where McHale presented McNally an almost unbelievable pitch. He offered McNally $125,000 to sign in 1976–more than he had ever made–and threw in $25,000 as a signing bonus.

“Gee, I don’t know,” McNally said. “I’m not sure I can even pitch at the major league level anymore.”

McHale told him not to worry about. He told McNally he’d get the $25,000 just for signing and coming to spring training in 1976.

McNally talked to Miller on the phone the next day, and they laughed about how McHale “just happened to be passing through Billings.”

Then Miller turned serious. “What are you going to do?” he said, knowing the money offered by the Expos would tempt any player thinking of making a comeback.

McNally said he wouldn’t sign.

“McHale wasn’t honest with me last year, and I’m not going to trust him again,” he said.

Although it was tempting to go to spring training and collect a $25,000 check just for that, McNally said he had no intention of playing “and it wouldn’t be right to take the money.”

That set the case in motion. The union filed the Messersmith and McNally grievances in early October, and baseball was on edge. Its old order might end, and everyone knew it.

The Lords of Baseball tried to stop the case by filing for an injunction to keep the Messersmith-McNally matter out of arbitration. But a federal judge said no to their request and ordered the hearing to proceed. McNally and Messersmith won the arbitration case later that fall, and a federal judge upheld the decision in 1976.