As a Major League Baseball executive – general manager of the Montreal Expos and the New York Mets, senior vice president of the San Diego Padres – Omar Minaya had unique thoughts of a man a friend cautioned him to keep to himself. This week, however, Minaya began working for the Major League Baseball Players Association, a.k.a. the players union, and can openly and freely express his admiration for Marvin Miller.

“When you work with a team you have to be careful about what you say about Marvin,” the 56-year-old Minaya said Wednesday.

No longer with a team, Minaya said of the founding director of the union, “He was always very kind and friendly with me. He was very informative about the role of the union over the years. I was overseeing the Expos, and he asked me about the Montreal situation. That was a sensitive issue to the union. It was the time of possible contraction.”

Miller was retired by the time (2002) Major League Baseball’s commissioner and owners threatened to eliminate two teams. The Expos and the Minnesota Twins were most prominently mentioned as the two most likely candidates for contraction, but the threat turned out to be a ruse, a negotiating ploy.

Minaya was in position to discuss contraction and other issues with Miller because they were part of a disparate group of 8 or 10 men put together for occasional lunches or dinners by Jack Newfield, a liberal writer, primarily for the Village Voice, a New York weekly newspaper.

“He was part of the group,” Minaya said before heading for his first union assignment at the Caribbean World Series in Puerto Rico. “He was intellectually honest. He was very kind to me. I was introduced to Marvin when we went to lunch. I was having a tuna fish sandwich. He was having a pastrami sandwich with a beer. I thought that was cool.”

Intellectually, Minaya is probably more at home with a group of Marvin Millers than a group of club owners. It is not unusual, then, that at this stage of his baseball life he has departed management for labor.

Minaya is the second interesting recruit for Tony Clark, the union’s executive director. The first was Dave Winfield, the Hall of Fame outfielder, who had been executive vice president and senior adviser with the Padres and is now a special adviser to Clark. Minaya, however, is the first executive to move from club baseball operations to the union.

Explaining his recruitment of Minaya, Clark said, “I’ve had a relationship with Omar for 13 years. We struck a relationship, and we’re neighbors in New Jersey five minutes apart. That wasn’t the plan, but that’s how it worked out.

“As we talked about the game, he expressed similar views. As our conversations increased, it got to the point where I threw it out as a feeler to see if it was something he could consider. We got to the point about a month ago where it could become reality.”

While he and Minaya talked, Clark had other conversations to make sure he would not encounter problems with union members who might not go for the idea of having a former general manager working for the union.

“I’ve talked to players and agents,” Clark said, “to get their input on their experiences with Omar to see if they had any concerns about someone who has been in management as long as he has to come over and work for the union. I could not find one cross word to say about their experiences with Omar whether it be management or development. It became obvious to me that he had the skill sets we were looking for.”

Minaya believes his time as Montreal general manager established his good relations with players and agents. MLB assumed control of the Expos in 2002 and named him general manager.

“To be able to handle that situation opened trust for me in the Players Association, he said.

“Tony first approached me between six months and a year ago,” Minaya said. “I always felt as general manager if you did right for the players they would respect you. But this is a career change. That’s why it took time for me to make a decision. I needed to talk to friends. It’s something that’s never been done. You’re always perceived as being on the other side. But after talking to everyone, they thought it was a great idea. Some people said you fit there.”

Especially encouraging was Leonor Colon, who four years ago joined the union on its player services staff after having served as Minaya’s executive assistant when he was the Mets’ general manager.

“She would say ‘you should think about it, Omar,’” Minaya said.

“He has such a good reputation; he has a good heart,” Colon said. “While it’s a big deal for him crossing over, I think it’s the right thing for him.”

With the union, Minaya will specialize in, among other areas, international issues, a draft and Cuba, for example. For starters, when he was in San Juan for the Caribbean series, Minaya met with Cuban officials.

Although the United States is in the process of re-establishing normal relations with Cuba, it would be premature to try to do anything involving Cuban players because the long-standing embargo banning the signing of players directly from Cuba remains in effect. The union, however, wants to be prepared if and when the embargo is lifted.

Among other functions Minaya will undertake are communications with all players, not just Latins; communications with agents (“some players don’t have proper representation,” he said), promotion of youth baseball in conjunction with MLB, developing the game domestically and “bringing management thinking of general managers to the organization.”

With Minaya’s moving to the union, the New York Yankees lost a chance to hire him to overhaul their long unproductive scouting and player development system. An executive of another club said the Yankees had been interested in having Minaya run their scouting, player development and international departments but had not sought permission from the Padres to talk to him.

One roadblock might have been the Yankees’ desire to have the head of their scouting and player development division work out of Tampa. The Yankees didn’t offer Minaya the job, but he has let people know he’s not interested in moving out of New Jersey.

The Yankees’ Tampa system hasn’t worked in Brian Cashman’s 17 years as general manager and in fact, he insisted in negotiating a contract extension in 2005 that all front-office power be centralized in New York.

Nevertheless, Cashman opted to lose a potential solution to the team’s dreadful minor league problem rather than change the failed geographical system.