I don’t think I’ll have reason to suspect the owners of collusion this off-season. Unless they are playing a new and different kind of game whose tricks elude my comprehension, they are signing free agents to legitimate contracts. Even Scott Boras, the master procrastinator, has done it.

Boras has secured a 9-year, $324 million contract for Gerritt Cole, the best pitcher on this year’s market. In his usual practice, Boras comes up with a mystery team without identifying it but uses it to entice real competitors and drag out the competition.

Cole, however, wanted to play for the Yankees, and the offer was already high enough that Boras had no reason to stall any longer. Cole, however, has been only one of many free agents who have already signed.

Last off-season the two most desired free agents were Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. Machado signed with San Diego Feb. 21, Harper not until nine days later with Philadelphia. Boras was Harper’s agent.

So what has happened this off-season? The past week was not a good time to find baseball people to ask that question. Offices were shut for the holidays, and the people who usually occupy them were vacationing and not reachable.

So I turned to a former colleague, Zach Kram, whom I can count on to be informed and up to date with such events.

“I’ve seen a number of possible theories,” Kram said, “but none strike me as particularly potent, and they’re all unsupported by any evidence. It’s very strange and I wish I had an answer—but so do a lot of other writers who don’t know why it’s happening either.”

I asked another friend, who is not in baseball but follows it and its developments very closely.

“Lots of money is available,” he said.

I can buy that explanation but have one problem with it. Even when owners have money they don’t like to spend it on players. They certainly don’t like giving it to players. They had money in the mid-1980s but stubbornly and stupidly refused to give it to players and instead engaged in three years of collusion against free agents. The chicanery cost the owners $280 million, which was probably a bargain for them.

What I remember most vividly from those years was the reaction of the owners’ chief labor negotiator, Barry Rona, any time I mentioned collusion. He laughed and scoffed at the suggestion that owners were doing anything illegal against the players. He did not get the last laugh.

With the slow pace of free-agent signings the past two off-seasons I suspected the owners were up to their old tricks, having figured out a way to undermine the players while avoiding the treble damages it would have cost them if they were caught colluding.

This off-season, though, no obvious signs of collusion have surfaced. Clubs have signed dozens of free agents and have signed them to big contracts. The Cole contract has been the biggest, but there have been other big contracts as well.

Among pitchers, Zack Wheeler has abandoned the Mets for the Phillies for five years and $118 million, Madison Bumgarner has left the Giants for the Diamondbacks for 5 years and $85 million, Hyun-Jin Ryu said so long to the Dodgers, moving to Toronto for 4 years and $80 million, Dallas Keuchel moves from the Braves to the White Sox for 3 years and $55.5 million, Cole Hamels at the age of 36 from the Cubs to the Braves for 1 year and $18 million, Dellin Betances from the Yankees to the Mets for 1 year and $10 million, Tannan Roark from Athletics to Blue Jays for 2 years and $24 million, Rick Porcello from the Red Sox to the Mets for 1 year and $10 million.

The most notable pitcher who has stayed home is Stephen Strasburg, who re-signed with the Nationals for 7 years and $245 million.

Among position players, third baseman Anthony Rendon has defected from the Nationals to the Angels for 7 years and $245 million, third baseman Mike Moustakas from the Brewers to the Reds for 4 years and $64 million, catcher Yasman Grandal from the Brewers to the White Sox for 4 years and $73 million, Didi Gregorius from the Yankees to the Phillies for 1 year and $14 million, Brett Gardner remained with the Yankees for 1 year and $12.5 million.

For the most part a lot of movement for a lot of money, unlike recent off-seasons. Will developments encourage clubs to repeat this next off-season? That, of course, remains to be seen. What we do know, on the other hand, is the upcoming season will require much more concentration and study to make sure we know who is playing for whom.

As a political science major in college many, many years ago, I viewed the past week as intriguing as any World Series. No, more intriguing. I mean the World Series is played every year; only three times in the 243-year history of our country has a president been impeached.

Agree with it or not, like it or not. Donald Trump has been impeached and will carry that stain not only for the rest of his life but also for the rest of eternity. The United States Senate is not very likely to convict Trump, but the House has impeached him.

That act last week makes Trump the only president I know who has been impeached. I readily acknowledge I did not know Andrew Johnson, who was impeached in 1868, and I do not know Bill Clinton, who was impeached in 1998.

However, I met Trump at Yankee Stadium some years ago when I was covering the Yankees. He was there as a guest of George Steinbrenner, and to get to the elevator and exit he had to pass through the rear of the press box, where I encountered him. He, of course, was not president or even a politician or television celebrity at the time.

He recognized my name, he told me, because “I’ve been reading you since I was in college.”

More encounters with Trump were to follow, mostly in his interest in buying a baseball team in a proposed new league that some entrepreneurs were trying to start during labor disputes between players and club owners in 1989 and 1994.

The latter venture collapsed when Trump and his partner, Meshulam Riklas, failed to show at a meeting of prospective owners at which critical deposits were to be made to fund the league. Trump never explained his absence although some people suggested he had wanted two franchises, one in New York and one in New Jersey, and the other investors balked at that.

At the time Trump was suspected of wanting to parlay his team into a team in Major League Baseball as he had planned with the NFL and his purchase of the New Jersey Generals. Yet he told me, “I see it as a very viable league. project. “Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. We’ll have a long-term contract with a major television network or a number of major networks, including cable.”

Neither league, of course, came into existence, and Trump never became an owner of a baseball team. Just president, an impeached president.

TAKING A RIDE WITH JFK

I never actually met John Kennedy, and come to think of it 60 years later, that was strange, perhaps rude, too.

I was the editor of the Pitt News, the University of Pittsburgh student newspaper, and I assigned myself to cover a campaign appearance at Pitt by candidate Kennedy. One problem, though. Kennedy was holding a news conference at a downtown hotel first, and I felt I should cover that, too.

But there was a streetcar strike, and I didn’t know how I could get to Pitt in time for the Kennedy speech. I don’t know how or where I got the nerve, but I asked one of Kennedy’s aides if I could thumb a ride with them.

So there I was riding in a limousine with Kennedy and two of his advisors, Pierre Salinger and Ken O’Donnell.

As an extra added benefit I was invited to wait in the Kennedy suite until JFK was ready. Jackie – the future first lady – was in the suite, but I didn’t dare try to initiate a conversation with her.

On the way to Pitt, Kennedy, sitting in the front seat with Salinger and O’Donnell and me in the back, expressed impressive knowledge of Pitt athletics, not that Pitt athletics were impressive.

About a year later Kennedy was back in Pittsburgh, this time as the Democratic presidential candidate, and I was working for the Associated Press. I covered my first World Series, Games 6 and 7 (Mazeroski’s home run), then the next day covered a Kennedy campaign appearance. For a political science major and a baseball fan, it couldn’t get any better than that.

BUSH THE AMIABLE

Of the presidents I have known, George Bush was by far the easiest to talk to and deal with. That was George W. Bush, the former controlling owner of the Texas Rangers and son of former President George H.W. Bush. He was as down to earth as any president has been, and even if you didn’t like his politics, you couldn’t help but like him.

As an owner, he was a politician, and when a gang of owners engaged in a plot to oust Fay Vincent as commissioner, Bush, a Vincent supporter, urged him to be more a politician. Playing politics, however, wasn’t Vincent’s style, and Bush didn’t have enough fire power to keep him in office.

Bush, on the other hand, wasn’t able to win all of his own fights through politics.

In 1994 Bush opposed Commissioner Bud Selig’s plan to realign some of the divisions, including putting the Rangers in a division with three West Coast teams. Bush objected, saying his team would be playing many of its games at a time too late for its fans to watch on television. This is how I described one of the meetings on that subject:

“One owners’ meeting comes to mind where, it turned out, Selig did not know and a vote backfired on him. That evening he emerged from the meeting room and, walking down the hall, spotted a reporter and made a gesture as if he were holding a machine gun and aiming it at the owners back in the room. That was a rare instance, though.”

Selig, fortunately for Bush, did not have a machine gun, but he had authority, and he couldn’t do any better than that. There’s more to the Selig-Bush story – including how both baseball and the country in the 21^st century could have been drastically different – but that’s for another time.

NIXON AND MY COUSIN

I didn’t know Richard Nixon, but we had a connection that was critical in his becoming president.

When Nixon began his political career, he ran for Congress from California. He defeated his first two opponents, beating Jerry Voorhees for a seat in the House of Representatives and Helen Gahagan Douglas for a seat in the U.S. Senate. He used the same strategy against both opponents, coloring them “pinkos,” suggesting they had Communist leanings. That was the Joseph McCarthy era, and it made Communists unpopular.

The strategy was devised by Nixon’s political adviser, Murray Chotiner, my cousin, my father’s nephew.

The Chotiners and the Chasses were not close geographically so I never met my cousin. When the family emigrated to America from Russia, the members initially all lived in Pittsburgh, where my uncle had settled when he emigrated, but eventually split up, the Chotiner segment going to Los Angeles.

I don’t know how Chotiner became Nixon’s political adviser, but without him, Nixon might never have become president. By the time he became president, though, Nixon and Chotiner had separated, at least publicly, because Chotiner had been caught up in a scheme involving Army coats and Nixon couldn’t afford to be tarnished with the connection.

Ironically, Chotiner was replaced by H.R. Halderman and John Ehrlichman, who wound up going to prison for their roles in the Watergate scandal that doomed Nixon’s presidency.

Chotiner was not around for Watergate, but had he not died in 1974 allegedly as the result of an automobile accident, he would have been involved in it because it was his sort of thing.

To complete this Nixon portion of my presidential tale, I have to note the day he resigned as president. That was August 9, 1974, when he left the White House with one of his hearty waves and flew home to southern California.

My wife, Ellen, and I were vacationing in California at the time and, incredibly, were driving south on the Pacific Coast Highway as Nixon’s plane flew overhead. I pulled off the highway, stopped at the side of the road, got out of the car and scooted up the adjoining hill. I did not see the former president, though, because the plane had taxied too far from the highway.

I received a letter from George Steinbrenner the other day. No, really, I did. Now I acknowledge that was an unlikely development considering that the Yankees’ owner died nine years earlier, but Steinbrenner did some pretty remarkable things when he was alive so I wouldn’t be so quick to doubt that he wrote that letter.

After opening the envelope and reading the letter, I can assure you that he did write it. Only he wrote it in 2006, Nov. 29 to be precise, meaning he wrote it almost exactly 13 years ago.

I would like to blame the United States Postal Service for the delay in delivery of the letter, but somehow, I overlooked it, and it wound up buried in a pile of papers that were apparently undisturbed for years.

Finding the letter now, though, was timely because the subject matter was Marvin Miller and the Hall of Fame.

Dear Murray:

It was with a great deal of interest and agreement that I read your November 21 column “Moment is Right for Miller to Moved From Ballot to Hall.”

I too believe that Marvin Miller highly deserves to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for the huge role that he played influencing the game and the business of baseball.

I will support you in any way necessary or possible to see that his election is brought to fruition.

Sincerely yours,

George M. Steinbrenner III

I regret that Miller never got to see that letter. Maybe he would have appreciated it; maybe he would have seen it as Steinbrenner grandstanding. No matter. What matters today is that after 16 years of futility covering rejections on veterans ballots seven times, Miller was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame Sunday.

Ironically, this is not where Miller wanted to be right now, and I’m not talking about his having died in 2012.

Four years earlier, Miller told me he was fed up with being a punching bag – he used another metaphor – for the Hall of and asked whom he should write to to be removed from consideration. I told him, and he wrote the letter.

“Paradoxically, I’m writing to thank you and your associates for your part in nominating me for Hall of Fame consideration, and, at the same time, to ask that you not do this again,” Miller wrote to Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Miller added: “The antiunion bias of the powers who control the Hall has consistently prevented recognition of the historic significance of the changes to baseball brought about by collective bargaining. As former executive director (retired since 1983) of the players’ union that negotiated these changes, I find myself unwilling to contemplate one more rigged veterans committee whose members are handpicked to reach a particular outcome while offering the pretense of a democratic vote. It is an insult to baseball fans, historians, sports writers and especially to those baseball players who sacrificed and brought the game into the 21^st century. At the age of 91, I can do without farce.”

In the years since his father’s death, Miller’s son, Peter, has resolutely held to his father’s position and did so again Tuesday in an e-mail to me from Japan, where he lives.

Miller wrote:

“As previously mentioned, my father did not wish his name to be placed in nomination for the HOF. And he repeatedly reaffirmed that wish, as well as his desire that I not participate in any HOF activities related to him. So the HOF results this year change nothing. He would of course wish the players elected to the Hall all the best for this recognition of their accomplishments.

I will just add that my father never sought personal fame. And while the case for electing Major League players to the Hall can be based on statistics, the salary numbers that my father is most famous for meant less to him than the simple freedom to choose employers to the extent one’s professional ability would allow.

For those like your reader(s) who believe they understand my father’s motives, I assure them that personal resentment had nothing to do with his decision not to take part in HOF procedures. The only ‘grievances’ that meant anything to him were those that could be taken up in independent arbitration between Major League Baseball players and club management.

Free agency in Baseball, made possible by independent arbitration, is an integral part of the story of American freedom. As such, Marvin Miller’s portrait in a public national institution, the National Portrait Gallery, presents this achievement in the most appropriate historical context.”

Hall of Fame officials will very likely seek someone, perhaps from the Players Association, to stand in for Miller, but owners and other management officials will be thrilled that they won, to not have to hear a possible Miller harangue about the way owners treated players before free agency.

I don’t know what Miller might have said in an induction speech, but I sure would have liked to hear it.

Miller was elected with 12 votes, the minimum number he needed for election from the 16-man panel. In 2011 Miller received 11 votes, falling one vote short of election by a different 16-man committee.

Ted Simmons, a former major league catcher, was the only one of nine players on the ballot who was elected. He got 13 votes. Simmons’ election, though, showed the fallacy in the election.

When he was eligible for the writers’ ballot, he received only 17 votes, 3.7 percent, and he was dropped from the ballot because he didn’t get the requisite 5 percent. Now he’s in the Hall of Fame.