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Before Jim Bunning became the somewhat deranged senator from Kentucky, he was a hell of a pitcher - a Hall of Famer for the Tigers, Phillies and , briefly, Dodgers and Pirates who won 224 games during a solid 17-year career.
But I never knew he was also a labor organizer!
According to Tommy Craggs at the sports site Deadspin, Bunning was one of the key players who convinced Marvin Miller to become executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.
Under [Miller's] stewardship, a weak company shop that existed more or less at the whim of the owners became one of the country's strongest unions, and for that, in a lot of ways, baseball has the junior senator from Kentucky to thank. Bunning, Miller says now, was "instrumental in my being elected in the first place."
Bunning was one of the four members of the players' search committee who lured Miller from the United Steelworkers, ultimately opening the door for the end of the reserve clause that bound players to one team for life, initiated free agency and allowed the Red Sox to sign Josh Beckett, David Ortiz and Mike Lowell.
And lose Pudge Fisk to Chicago and Johnny Damon to the Yankees, but you gotta take the good with the bad.
Miller says Bunning was never a progressive, but when it came to working conditions for his co-workers and himself, he was militant.
Miller and Bunning have stayed in touch from time to time over the years, and the veteran labor organizer - who once again was shut out of the Hall of Fame this year - sometimes wonders what happened to the old right hander.
From afar, Miller followed Bunning's 2004 Senate campaign, during which the senator did just about everything short of howl naked at the moon. "Peculiar" is Miller's gentle characterization of his old friend's behavior. "I tell you," he says with a small sigh, "I'm a little worried about him."
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