Curt Flood, Marvin Miller, and Free Agency

The man most responsible for baseball free agency - the player's right to sign with any team - is not actually a player. Instead, Marvin Miller, head of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) from 1966 to 1982, shephered the process through the court system.

After losing a case with Curt Flood (pictured in St. Louis uniform), Miller would eventually gain free agency rights through the cases of Dave McNally (pictured at bottom) and Andy Messersmith (shown in his new Braves uniform).

As a measure of Miller's impact (and others of course), the minimum annual salary for a MLB player in 1966 was $6000 ... in 2016, the minimum salary was over $500,000 and the average salary was more than $3.3 Million (the average salary surpassed $3 million per year for the first time back in 2010).