Strike One

Poor baseball. At a time when the sport badly needs to spruce up its image, the major-league teams seem incapable of even drumming up a lively game of toss. Last week, for the first time in the 93-year history of the major leagues, spring training opened to a mass boycott by the players.

Ostensibly, the problem was cash. The Major League Baseball Players' Association, which speaks for all the athletes through elected player representatives from each team, wants the club owners to enrich its pension fund with $6,500,000 for three years; the owners are offering $5,300,000. Yet as the infighting got nastier, it seemed to turn into a classic test of strength. On one side, an owner threatened: "If we can't use major-leaguers, we'll fill up our rosters with minor-leaguers." On the other, Marvin Miller, the $55,000-a-year negotiator for the Players' Association, accused the owners of circulating a "misleading and deceptive propaganda document" and instigating "vicious personal attacks in the vague hope of destroying the Players' Association."

But professional ballplayers are relative newcomers to this sort of labor dispute. While the association leaders argued, its members were hardly demonstrating true trade-union solidarity. Last week, torn between duty to teammates and job security, a few began to bolt. Catcher Jerry Grote, for instance, said that he backed the boycott but, since he had signed his contract with the New York Mets "some time ago," he felt it only proper that he should report to training camp. "If it had been any one of the 23 other teams," he quickly added, "I wouldn't have signed. But this team has treated me well."

For the Kids. "I think they can settle this dispute without me," said Catcher John Bateman, as he checked in at the West Palm Beach, Fla., training camp of the Montreal Expos, a new National League team. "I always had a weight problem, and I thought it best for me if I came on down." Other defectors also pleaded personal problems. "I can't buy a house and strike at the same time," said Pitcher Pete Richert of the Baltimore Orioles. "You got to keep busy when you have four kids," said Chicago White Sox Catcher Russ Nixon. Though Ken Harrelson, the Boston Red Sox outfielder who led the American League in runs batted in last season, was the only name player to break the boycott so far, several others allowed that they would not hold out long.

Most fans found it hard to sympathize either with athletes whose average salary is $26,000 a year or with businessmen who are wealthy enough to own a major-league team. Their reaction was traditional: Play Ball.

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