Associated Press

Marvin Miller announced an end to a players’ strike in 1972 with (from left) Gary Peters of the Red Sox, Wes Parker of the Dodgers, Joe Torre of the Cardinals, and lawyer Dick Moss.

By Mark Feeney Globe Staff

Marvin Miller — who as first executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association had a greater impact on the national pastime than anyone since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 — according to some, it was a greater impact than anyone since Babe Ruth saved the sport in the 1920s after the Black Sox scandal — died Tuesday in New York. He was 95.

Miller died at his home in Manhattan at 5:30 a.m., said his daughter, Susan. He had been diag­nosed with liver cancer in August.

“Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis,” writer Studs Terkel once said, referring to the longtime leader of the United Mine Workers.

When Mr. Miller joined the players association in 1966, the average player salary was $19,000. By the time he retired, in 1982, it was $240,000. Players had gained the right to free agency and salary arbi­tration. And ownership’s ability to dominate the players was a thing of the past, a fact borne out by strikes in 1972 and 1981, the first in major league history, which were settled very much to the union’s advantage. (In 1972, Atlanta Braves general manager Paul Richards had fumed, “Tojo and Hirohito couldn’t stop baseball, but Marvin Miller could.”)

Those changes were all owing to the Major League Baseball Players Association. And as Mr. Miller’s successor Donald Fehr put it, “Marvin, for all intents and purposes, created the union.”