November 6, 2022

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

During his playing days, he was known as a clubhouse lawyer.

He boasted a degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Tulsa.

He could talk, he was eloquent and well spoken.

Aside from spending his entire, stellar big-league career with the Montreal Expos from 1973 to 1985, Steve Rogers devoted much of that time to being the team's Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) representative and he was a member of the negotiating committee that helped settle the players' strike in 1981.

For close to half a century, close to 50 years, imagine that, Rogers has spent an inordinate amount of time affiliated with the MLBPA. He has been a tireless advocate for union causes.

And so on Nov. 5, he was announced as the winner of the union's Curt Flood Award, which goes to a "former player, living or deceased, who in the image of Flood, demonstrated a selfless, long-time devotion to the players association and advancement of players' rights.''

According to the MLBPA, Rogers spent 10 of his 12+ seasons with the Expos as the team's player rep and another two as the alternate rep. He was elected the National League's pension rep at the 1976 executive board meeting.

Rogers and fellow major leaguers Bob Boone, Doug DeCinces and Mark Belanger were instrumental figures on the committee that dealt with owners during the negotiations to settle the 1981 strike.

In his book Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball, John Helyar spoke highly of Rogers as a negotiator, saying he was a "calm, analytical voice in the committee's caucuses.''

When his career ended and he never played in the majors following his release by the Expos in May 1985, Rogers decided to continue working for the union after a brief respite. He began on a part-time basis when he was asked by then PA executive director Don Fehr to assist in pension matters. Several years later, he helped in sorting out collusion cases of that era.

In 1999, he went full-time with the PA. For a number of years, he worked out of their headquarters in New York and then in recent years, he has been employed out of his home in Jenks, Okla.

At 73, Rogers remains on the MLBPA payroll full-time as a special assistant in the players-benefits division and in the career-development program. Who knows, the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame member may work until he's 75 or longer.

"The Curt Flood Award commemorates Flood’s historic judicial fight against baseball’s reserve system, which paved the way for free agency in the 1970s,'' the union said in a news release. "The 2022 nominating committee, made up of seven former and current MLBPA executives, selected Steve Rogers, who joined the Players Association full-time as a Special Assistant in 1999 and continues to serve the PA and players with his institutional knowledge and encyclopedic grasp of the pension fund and benefit plans.

"No player has devoted himself more of his professional career in advocating for his players than Steve Rogers. Immersing himself in complex issues, Rogers has earned the respect of his peers as a voice of common sense and a driving force for player unity, strength and resolve.''

As we head toward the end of 2022, Rogers is still going strong with the union and as a director of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association.

Congratulations, Steve, on this award. It's richly deserved.