Raymond Goetz

Raymond A. Goetz

• School Beloit College, University of Chicago

• Born May 14, 1922 in Rockford, IL USA
• Died May 2, 2000 in Lawrence, KS USA

Biographical Information

Raymond Goetz served as the arbitrator for Major League Baseball from 1979 to 1984, issuing a number of consequential decisions during his mandate.

He originally studied journalism but interrupted that to serve in the United States Air Force during World War II as a bomber pilot, being discharged in 1947 with the rank of Lieutenant. He then went to the Chicago School of Law to earn his law degree, thanks to a dispensation accorded to returning veterans. He practiced labor law before earning a graduate degree and taking over a teaching position at the University of Kansas in 1966 (he would remain a professor until 1987). He began to work on the side as a labor arbitrator at that time and soon became very prominent in that line of work. In 1979, he was hired by MLB as its grievance arbitrator, a position previously held by four other men including Peter Seitz, whose decision on the reserve clause in 1976 had momentous consequences.

His first ruling concerned bonuses amounting to $160,000 paid to Bob Horner of the Atlanta Braves; he ruled that they should be considered part of his salary, forcing the Braves to offer Horner a much higher salary for the 1979 season than they had anticipated. He denied Horner's request to be made a free agent, however. On September 22, 1980, he overturned a suspension by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn of Texas Rangers pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, who had been arrested a few weeks earlier for entering Canada while in possession of a small quantity of cocaine and other drugs. Officially, the suspension was because Jenkins had failed to cooperate with the Commissioner's office's investigation of the matter. He ruled that this form of discipline was contrary to the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and that the Commissioner was forcing Jenkins to jeopardize his own defense in the criminal case, a clear violation of his constitutional rights. This was the first time a Commissioner's decision had been quashed, and Goetz's ruling became an important precedent in future drug cases. On February 12, 1981, he declared catcher Carlton Fisk a free agent because the Boston Red Sox had failed to offer him a contract before the December 20th legal deadline.

On July 1, 1983, he made another important ruling, this one concerning players who were on the disabled list during the 1981 strike: his decision was that they were not entitled to their salary during the time of the strike, as they were deemed to be striking as rank-and-file members of the Players Union. Some players had to reimburse salaries that clubs had paid them prior to his ruling. The total amount in dispute was $2.5 million, a very significant sum at the time. He was originally scheduled to hear the first of the collusion cases filed by the players regarding the lack of competition among teams to sign available free agents, but after he resigned from his permanent position early in 1984 the cases were passed along to Thomas Roberts and George Nicolau, who would issue important rulings in favor of the players. He continued to rule on salary arbitration cases between 1984 and 1991, after his resignation as grievance arbitrator. In the final case he heard in 1991, he awarded pitcher Doug Drabek an annual salary of $3.35 million when the Pittsburgh Pirates had offered him $2.3 million; at the time, it was the largest award achieved through the salary arbitration process.

Goetz also worked as a permanent arbitrator for the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers. Extremely well respected within his profession, he served as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Labor Arbitration and the Law of Collective Bargaining Agreements.

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