North County 7/20/94
A MAJOR LEAGUE MESS IS BREWING
There is going to be a Major League Baseball strike. It is no longer a matter of IF, but WHEN; and perhaps if you’d like to throw a HOW LONG? in there, feel free. The Lords of Baseball have laid down the gauntlet. The boys with the number on their backs are expected to walk. And the word I’m getting from those in the know is that for the first time since 1904 there won’t be a World Series.
Believe it.
As in the past, the players will take most of the heat from the press and fans. The average salary in The Show these days is $1.5 million, and there is little else that the average middle-class American baseball fan finds more abhorrent than a spoiled brat jock with tons of money and a grudge to bear. But just as in the past, it’s those lovable owners and their incredible practice of shooting themselves in the foot and turning around to wonder about the perpetrator, that have some explaining to do. If you choose to throw blame, there is plenty of places it will stick.
There was always a prevailing fear among the owners that Vincent might side with his crazy, “Integrity of the Game” rant instead of pushing their money-grubbing agenda. So, off he went shaking his head in disbelief like the last sane man leaving Captain Bligh’s ship after the mutiny.
“There are two axioms that have run though the history of professional baseball,” my friend, Donald Dewey once told me. “You never have enough pitching, and no owner ever makes money.” Dewey, co-author of The Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball Teams, finished his diatribe by assuring me that the whole history of the game has been low-lighted by owners continually trying to concoct new and exciting ways to drive down players salaries.
Now the owners want to take away arbitration. This was something they originally shoved at the players to get those greedy bloodsuckers in a small room with a naked light and jam their stats down their throats to prove they are a worthless lot. But the bell curve of big dollar free agency and the emergence of the evil agents turned the hardball dagger right back at them.
The owners want a salary cap. “It’s time we share the burden of our game’s ills,” they say. “We’re paying you guys too much!” Not unlike the President of the United States trying to keep a straight face while asking Americans to help knock down a national debt the government ran up like a bar tab.
Let’s face it folks, it’s easier squeezing that camel through a needle’s eye than it is to get employees to say they’re earning more than their worth. So the players are putting the proverbial thumb to nose and telling the bosses to take their game and shove it. This could happen by Labor Day; but it make no mistake, it will happen.
“Do not be surprised if the players don’t come back at all,” Baseball Weekly’s Rob Rains told me just yesterday. And it’s this type of wild hyperbole that has already effected every facet of the game. Teams are afraid to make trades for a stretch drive that may never come.
Major League Baseball has taken hits from every direction since Fay Vincent was sent packing by the owners two years ago. They scoffed at the former commissioner’s suggestion that they consider revenue-sharing to rescue some of the struggling franchises like the ones in Pittsburgh and Seattle. There was always a prevailing fear among the owners that Vincent might side with his crazy, “Integrity of the Game” rant instead of pushing their money-grubbing agenda. So, off he went shaking his head in disbelief like the last sane man leaving Captain Bligh’s ship after the mutiny.
Milwaukee Brewers owner, Bud Selig and his band of cronies have run things into the ground quite well since then. Television ratings are at an all-time low, the realignment of divisions continues to be an embarrassment with losing teams in first place, and public perception of this mess has driven down a brand new avenue of bad. And it will be a sure bet that closing the game down right now before football season will murder any interest the fans may have if the matter is settled at all.
The looming talk of work stoppage has made this a lame duck season. Nobody is going to watch a long distance run with no finish line. The real shame of it all is that Ken Griffey jr. and Matt Williams will never get a shot at Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. Kirby Puckett and Joe Carter won’t get a shot at Hack Wilson’s single-season RBI mark. And we’ll never know if Lee Smith could surpass the single-season save record.
But I’m sure those pompous, sanctimonious creeps that run this game we have all grown up loving, will believe that we’ll come running back eventually. And you know what? We will. Because all the low-rent disingenuous prattle that spews from this band of apathetic business whores could never wipe away the feeling of sitting in a ball park and watching the beauty of baseball unfold.
They just can’t help trying.
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