When Major League Baseball entered the 1980s, the task of assigning umpires fell to a single staffer who had to juggle a chaotic schedule, travel constraints, and the league’s expanding roster of games. The result was an uneven distribution of officiating crews that often left certain teams with less experienced umpires and created logistical nightmares for the league’s operations department.
The Manual Assignment Era
Steve McKelvey, then a young umpire, was tasked with manually mapping out each crew’s itinerary. Without the benefit of modern scheduling software, he relied on spreadsheets and phone calls, a process that frequently produced imbalanced game distributions and forced crews to travel long distances on short notice.
At the same time, the collective bargaining agreement that introduced salary arbitration and free agency gave players a new avenue to negotiate contracts after three and six years of service, respectively. These mechanisms were intended to balance team control with player earnings, but they also opened the door to market inefficiencies.
McKelvey’s research, conducted using data from the 1983‑1985 seasons, revealed that 61 percent of free agents posted markedly lower performance metrics in their first year with a new team. The finding suggested that the market for talent was not as fluid as owners had claimed, a conclusion that resonated with legal scholars and journalists alike.
His analysis was shared with the MLB Player Relations Committee and later cited in a USA Today exposé on alleged collusion among team owners. The article helped shape the narrative that owners were conspiring to suppress player salaries, a claim that would later surface in antitrust litigation.
After a stint as an agent with DiaMMond Management Group, McKelvey pivoted away from the fight to limit salaries and toward shaping the next generation of baseball executives. In 2002 he founded the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a program that has since been ranked the world’s premier graduate offering in sport management.
An Academic Powerhouse
The department’s influence extends far beyond the classroom; its alumni occupy key front‑office positions across the league, including Chris Antonetti in Cleveland, Rob Metzler in Detroit, Nick Avanzato with the Yankees, TJ Tullis in Houston, and Ben Cherington in Pittsburgh. Their decisions on player contracts, scouting strategies, and league policy often echo the very principles McKelvey championed during his umpire years.
McKelvey’s legacy is also preserved in the Du Bois Library, where his extensive legal archives are stored for researchers, ensuring that the lessons of the 1980s continue to inform future debates about labor relations in professional sports.