Baseball's Sputtering Restart

By B.J. Phillips

Facing a short season and a screwy format, fans stay home

Chicago Cubs Pitcher Mike Krukow looked in for the sign, planted his foot on the rubber, gripped the ball and got set to throw. But there was a slight hitch as he began his stretch. The third-base umpire immediately waved home the New York Met base runner standing on third. Thus was scored the first run in the second half of the strike-broken 1981 baseball season. The national pastime returned, not with a bang but a balk.

In the two weeks since Krukow's lead-off gaffe, the rest of baseball has gone blundering in his footsteps, devising a "second season" of artificial pennant races that promised to reward bad teams and penalize good ones, and prompted some players and managers to threaten openly that they would throw games if they would benefit by doing so under the screwy new rules. Under a lame-brain plan devised by league officials, the four teams leading their divisions when the strike started June 12 (the New York Yankees, Oakland A's, Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers) were declared "first season" pennant winners. All were given berths in special best-of-five-game playoffs against the winners of the "second season" races in their divisions. The victors would then advance to the regular league-championship playoffs. Finally, an American and a National League pennant winner would be declared, and that almost forgotten fixture of autumn, the World Series, would begin in the bracing night air of late October.

Clubhouse sharpies quickly spotted a serious flaw. Since the standings of the prestrike season were, effectively, wiped clean, all 26 major league clubs resumed play on an equal footing. The New York Mets, 17 and 34 before the strike, spent a few heady days in first place after the season resumed, and found their new lease on life appealing. But the Cincinnati Reds, just one half-game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West when the walkout started, suddenly found themselves running neck and neck with the San Diego Padres, who were 12 1/2 games back and fading last June.

The crime would be compounded under this format if the same club won both halves of the pennant. It would still have to win a best-of-five playoff with the team sporting the second best record over the full season. And by using overall records to determine the other playoff team, baseball left itself open to all sorts of shenanigans. Say the A's and Kansas City Royals are fighting for first place in September, with the Chicago White Sox close on their heels. If the White Sox contrived to lose their final series against Oakland, the A's would have a better chance of winning both halves of the season. And if they did, the second playoff spot might go to Chicago, since it was 31-22 before the strike, while Kansas City started off with a dismal 20-30 showing. White Sox Manager Tony LaRussa and his starting players admitted that they were not above chicanery if it meant derailing the Royals. Said offseason Attorney LaRussa: "If it got to that peculiar circumstance where if you won a ball game, you lost a spot in the playoffs, then I would refuse to take the field and accept a forfeit."

With the threat of another Black Sox scandal looming, Commissioner Kuhn broke his strikelong silence to assure fans that he would "preserve the integrity of the game." The playoff plan was altered so that if a club won both halves, the second playoff spot would go to the team with the second best record during the second season. Thus each team would have to win games, not lose them, against every opponent. Cincinnati Reds President Dick Wagner called the solution a "whitewash," an understandable complaint since Kuhn had effectively nullified 35 Reds' victories in the first half. Equally outraged were the Baltimore Orioles, who conceivably could finish with the best overall record in all of baseball and still miss the playoffs. Orioles' Owner Edward Bennett Williams, an outspoken critic of the way Kuhn and Owners' Representative Ray Grebey handled the strike negotiations, despaired over the playoffs debacle: "They would screw up a two-car funeral."

Indeed, at times this year baseball has seemed bent on presiding over its own funeral. More than 50 game dates were lost because of the strike, and fan interest has clearly waned. Attendance for both leagues was down more than 2,000 a game, an 11% decrease from prestrike levels. When compared with the same dates last season, the figures were gloomier still: average attendance dropped 25%.

Even welcome-back-baseball gimmicks didn't help. In Cleveland, 72,086 attended the All-Star game the night before the season resumed; on the first day of regular play, 4,773 showed up. Padres Owner Ray Kroc made admission free on reopening day, and 52,608 San Diegans thronged to the stadium. The next day, only 5,360 were willing to pay to watch the Padres play. The season had become a bit of a farce and the fans knew it. When the Atlanta Braves began a home stand in an unaccustomed position --first place--only 7,556 fans came out to the park. The headline the next day could be extended to all of baseball: BRAVES GOT CROWD THEY DESERVED.

--By B.J. Phillips

Reported by Dean Brelis and Jamie Murphy/New York

With reporting by Dean Brelis, Jamie Murphy

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