Marvin Miller, the man behind the Major League Baseball Players Association’s rise from an ineffective organization to the most powerful labor organization in the history of the country, has passed away at the age of 95. There are many people who have written big in-depth looks at Miller’s impact, and you should check those out. Here, however, I’ll just let the numbers speak for themselves:

$6,000: The minimum salary of a MLB player when Marvin Miller took over the union in 1966.

$19,000: The average salary of a MLB player when Marvin Miller took over the union in 1966.

$241,000: The average salary of a MLB player when Marvin Miller retired in the early 1980s.

$480,000: The minimum salary of an MLB player in 2012.

$3.4 million: The average salary of an MLB player at the beginning of the 2012 season.

Whatever your opinion of Miller, the union or money in baseball, you cannot deny that he, and the union he built, has left a permanent mark upon the way the business of baseball is operated.