Bummer of '94

By WALTER SHAPIRO

If life were fair, if this were a just world, if the prayers of small boys (and large men) were answered, baseball fans would have turned on the late sports news last Friday night to hear something like this:

"Hey, guys and gals, this is Biff Bixley with the scores. Another great night for baseball. Dingers were flying everywhere. Thirty-two home runs, including a clout by Matt Williams of the Giants that looks like it went into orbit. Roll that tape! Is this ball juiced or what? With 44 taters, the Mattmeister has now moved ahead of Roger Maris' record pace. But the big news was in Cleveland, where Albert Belle crushed two homers, including this titanic upper-deck shot, to lead the Tribe to a 9-3 victory over the Brewers. For the first time since 1954, it's the -- yes! -- first-place Indians. Talk about a real-life Field of Dreams. It don't get any better than this."

But such August fantasies were not to be, not in Cleveland, Ohio, nor anywhere else in the green cathedrals of what Annie Savoy in Bull Durham called "the Church of Baseball." The 1994 major league season may have ended for good late Thursday night in Oakland, California, with the sadly appropriate third strike as A's pinch hitter Ernie Young whiffed on a fast ball from strikeout king Randy Johnson of the Seattle Mariners. With that final, futile swing, the national pastime went down for the count as the more than 750 members of the Major League Players Association began their long- dreaded strike, baseball's eighth work stoppage since 1972. Never before have the games been halted this late in the season. Never before have the October play-offs and the World Series been in such dire jeopardy. Never before has the naked power struggle between players and owners seemed so heedless and self-destructive.

And there is an unquantifiable loss. The pastoral joys of baseball, joys that no other sport can match, have dissipated. That final prestrike game at Oakland Coliseum last Thursday night can serve as a parable. A balmy summer night, small children with oversize mitts dreaming of foul balls, peanuts, Cracker Jack and the familiar Take Me Out to the Ball Game played during the seventh-inning stretch. But then it came time for the refrain "It's one! two! three strikes, you're out!" A chorus of boos rose from the stands.

Baseball teaches its disciples patience and resilience -- how else to survive a six-month season in which even great teams lose 60 games? But there were danger signs amid the 26,808 fans in Oakland that this time around both the players and the owners might be caught stealing the hearts of the faithful. Placards told part of the story: OWNERS AND PLAYERS: WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH? And WILL PLAY FOR FOOD. But so did the number of black-and-silver N.F.L. Raider caps in the crowd. "Do the players play because of a love of the game or because of money?" asked 32-year-old Arthur Dover. "I think this strike shows the answer." Then, by way of warning to the players, he pointed to his Raider headgear and added, "We do have football coming up."

Ever since that mythic street urchin wailed, "Say it ain't so, Joe" to Shoeless Joe Jackson after he confessed that he was involved in fixing the 1919 World Series, generations of sad-eyed children have been forced to learn that baseball can be a cruel business. So it was in Oakland with 14-year-old Jeremy Musser and his brother Nick, 11. The moral for Nick is that "the players are getting too greedy." Jeremy's allegiance to the game is in danger of fading. "If I can't be a baseball fan," he said practically, "I'll probably switch to golf." All over America, empty baseball diamonds bake with dust as the Jeremy-and-Nick generation sinks putts, shoots hoops, kicks soccer balls or just hangs out at the mall. Baseball is losing the young (the last time a World Series game was played during daytime was 1987), and a lengthy strike will only hasten the exodus.

The strike forced cancellation of 42 games scheduled for last Friday and the weekend. But more than that, it broke the cherished bond that the game has with its die-hard fans. Baseball, more than any other sport, depends on a complete 162-game season to maintain the continuity of its records. Not since the 1930s had baseball witnessed such a fan-friendly display of power hitting as this season. Conspiracy theorists mutter darkly about a livelier ball, while other analysts point to depleted pitching staffs and new homer-haven ball parks. Baseball's most hallowed record, Roger Maris' 61 homers in 1961, was in danger of being eclipsed. Five marquee-idol sluggers (Matt Williams, Ken Griffey, Frank Thomas, Barry Bonds and Albert Belle) were all on target to hit more than 50 home runs. Tony Gwynn -- the last star left in San Diego as the cash-starved Padres traded off their high-priced talent -- was in sight of the holy grail of a Ted Williams-style .400 batting average. How quickly a magical season was transformed into a haunting gallery of might-have-beens.

The negotiations resumed on Friday, but only hard-core true believers (like lifelong Indians fans) clung to the hope of an early settlement. True, both sides did agree to meet separately with federal mediators, as they did during the 50-day 1981 strike. An optimistic source who is in touch with both the owners and the players' union painted an upbeat scenario of baseball returning around Labor Day. "It'll take a week before both sides begin serious bargaining," he theorized. "Another 10 days to hammer out an agreement. And maybe four or five days for the players and teams to get ready to resume play." But as in any work stoppage, timetables are all airy speculation. "What this boils down to is a test of wills," says John Helyar, author of Lords of the Realm, a recent book on the business of baseball. "And you're not going to find out the other side's willpower until it's tested with a work stoppage."

The baseball strike should be viewed more as a civil war in a wealthy extended family than an old-fashioned labor-management confrontation. The owners -- who include such tycoons as broadcaster Ted Turner (Atlanta Braves) and home-video king Wayne Huizenga (Florida Marlins), along with such FORTUNE 500 businesses as the Tribune Co. (Chicago Cubs) and Anheuser-Busch (St. Louis Cardinals) -- possess the most coveted playthings in America: major league sports franchises. The players, backed by the most successful union in history, have grown rich beyond the wildest dreams of Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays. More than 100 players make over $3 million a season; the average salary is just over $1 million. During the past decade, baseball has grown from a sleepy $600 million business to an industry worth almost $2 billion. The strike, at its core, is over the simplest of economic issues: how to divide this growing pie. And while economics is as riveting as a two-hour rain delay, it is central to the stalled negotiations. The clash involves base self- interest and primal greed: the owners want to put a cap on how much players can earn; the players want to defend and expand the right to negotiate salaries they believe they deserve.

Even before the owners ousted Fay Vincent as baseball commissioner in September 1992, they had long been prepping for a beanball war with the players. Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig -- who has turned the title "interim commissioner" into a seemingly lifetime appointment -- makes no secret of keeping the commissioner's job vacant to prevent an outsider from trying to impose labor peace. As their negotiator, the owners selected former New York City transit czar and failed mayoral candidate Richard Ravitch (he received 2% of the vote in the 1989 Democratic primary). The self-confident Ravitch believed he could pull off a near impossible double play: sell the players on a salary cap (thereby limiting their total income, as other professional sports leagues do) and work out a mechanism for wealthy teams (the New York Yankees, the world champion Toronto Blue Jays) to share more revenue with their impoverished cousins (like the near bankrupt Pittsburgh Pirates and Selig's Brewers).

As it turned out, Ravitch's ambitious double-play pivot did not exactly match the grace of Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith. It took Ravitch 18 months to work out a limited revenue-sharing formula. And even then the wealthier teams made it contingent on the players' miraculously agreeing to a salary cap. And though the baseball contract officially expired at the end of 1993, Ravitch didn't put the owners' salary-cap proposal on the negotiating table until mid-June. This complex plan would limit total player salaries to 50% of overall major league revenues, although guaranteeing that overall salaries would not fall below their current level. This would depress free-agent spending by wealthy clubs and simultaneously force small-market teams to sign higher-priced talent. The payoff to owners was clear: player salaries currently equal 58% of revenues and are growing. Small wonder that the players' response, enunciated by union negotiator Don Fehr, was in effect "Death before dishonor -- a salary cap never!" The union's own counterproposal was an unimaginative enhancement of the status quo: increasing player bargaining rights across the board and upping the minimum salary from $109,000 to more than $175,000.

Like the European powers in the fateful August days of 1914 leading up to World War I, both owners and players became locked in unyielding stances that made protracted trench warfare inevitable. The few bargaining sessions that were held before the strike quickly degenerated into formulaic speeches and sarcastic byplay, all accentuated by the growing animosity between the voluble, chain-smoking Ravitch and the intense, almost humorless Fehr. "Did you see how unpleasant he is?" Ravitch asked rhetorically about Fehr before a joint TV appearance Friday. "It's never been like that in all the negotiations I've been involved in." If the season were to end without a contract, the owners would retain powerful weapons in their arsenal: the legal right under labor law to impose their proposal for a salary cap and the ability to lock the players out of 1995 spring training if they balked. So like characters in a Clifford Odets play, the union believed their only recourse was to strike.

Aug. 12 -- a date that should live in infamy as long as baseball is played -- was chosen as the strike date by a player vote to give the union maximum leverage. As employees, the players had already received more than two-thirds of their 1994 salaries. But the owners earn almost all their national-TV revenues during the September pennant races and the October postseason. (The broadcast rights to the play-offs and the World Series alone were projected to bring in $180 million.) The owners had just launched their experimental Baseball Network on ABC and NBC with the mid-July All-Star Game. Early TV ratings were higher than expected. To hype fan interest, the owners had offended baseball purists by adding a second tier of postseason play-offs complete with football-like wild-card teams beginning this year. (The gimmick may have a fatal flaw: the Texas Rangers would currently qualify for the play- offs even though 10 other teams in the American League have better records.) The players, armed with a strike fund of nearly $200 million in hoarded licensing revenue, appeared united as they braced for a lengthy strike.

At the end of the Oakland game last Thursday, the mood in the A's locker room was somber and determined. Relief pitcher John Briscoe, 26, making $114,000 in his first full year in the majors, admitted that he feels for fans, but added, "We got to do what's right. I don't think they really understand things." As for baseball, Briscoe predicted, "The game will stay the same, no matter what. It was here before we came, and it'll still be here after we're gone." The final batter, rookie Ernie Young, with just 31 trips to the plate in the big leagues, tried to display the composure of a veteran when he said, "Everybody wants to see baseball. But this is part of life. Things don't always go the way you'd like."

No, they certainly don't, as every rabid Rotisserie rooter, desperately craving his breakfast box-score fix, can attest. What makes the present condition of baseballus interruptus so galling is that the major leagues as a whole (unlike several individual teams) are prospering. Before the strike, attendance was running a little ahead of the record 70 million who went to games in 1993. Following the opening of Baltimore's fabled Camden Yards in 1992, new baseball-only parks -- combining classic ballyard architecture with modern amenities -- have brought sellout crowds to the Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers.

Moreover, it is hard to lose money selling a baseball team, in part because there are probably more major Van Gogh paintings floating around than available big league franchises. The Orioles were auctioned off for a record $173 million last year, an increase of more than $100 million from their purchase price in 1988. Even the hapless Seattle Mariners, who have had only two winning seasons in their 17-year history, were successively sold for $13 million in 1981, $76 million in 1989 and $125 million in 1992. There are four or five serious bidders for the hand-to-mouth Pittsburgh Pirates (asking price: $85 million), a team that has reportedly lost $20 million in the past three years.

This is not to deny that the owners have valid fiscal complaints. Ravitch argues, with justice, that owners have trouble predicting their player costs from year to year. The prime culprit here is baseball's bizarre system of salary arbitration, which is designed to protect players with three to six years of major league service. (Veterans can negotiate their own contracts as free agents, while young players must accept what their team pays them as long as it meets the minimum salary.) A baseball arbitrator must choose between the team's offer and the player's demand; he is not allowed to split the difference. What this has meant in practice over the years is that each time a spendthrift owner like George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees pays a no- hit, no-field free-agent shortstop $2.5 million, every journeyman infielder can successfully argue for the same salary in arbitration. So the only way a team in a small market -- like the Padres in San Diego -- can adhere to its de facto salary cap is to trade off young players the moment they become eligible for arbitration. (The San Diego payroll is currently a rock-bottom $14 million.)

Although Ravitch steadfastly denies it, many in baseball speculate that the owners' negotiating goal is to eliminate the hated arbitration system rather than to mandate a salary cap. (The union clings to the unrealistic stance that all players with two years in the majors should qualify for arbitration.)

In the hours leading up to the player strike, several owners of wealthy teams pointedly dissented from Ravitch's salary-cap proposal. "It's all dollars, knowing what it's going to cost to play ball," said Jerry McMorris, who owns the Colorado Rockies, a hugely popular expansion team. "I don't think that a salary cap is necessary." Other mavericks included the ever surprising George Steinbrenner and Peter Angelos, new owner of the Orioles. But an insider close to the owners cautioned, "Nothing heavy is going on. I don't think people will follow Steinbrenner or Angelos either." Still, Angelos deserves credit for floating the sensible idea that the owners should voluntarily eliminate the rationale for the union's strike by pledging two things: to impose no unilateral salary cap, and not to lock the players out of next year's spring training. He also proposed that prominent outside accountants examine the books of all 28 teams to clarify how many are actually losing money. Team finances are even more mysterious than the infield-fly rule. Selig initially claimed that 19 teams were in the red, although he later revised the figure down to roughly a dozen.

The internal politics of the owners gives new meaning to the term Balkanization. As author John Helyar puts it, "You have 28 different owners and 28 different economic interests, and no matter how united they say they are, they tend to split according to their economic interests." Clearly, some owners (Steinbrenner, Angelos) want to settle fast. The problem is that the owners, at Selig's behest, enacted a stop-me-before-I-buckle-again clause that requires 21 votes for an agreement after a player strike begins. Some theorize that Selig might lead a kamikaze band of less profitable owners to block an agreement well into next season. But the owners seem to make and break their own rules almost at will, and it's possible they could finesse themselves around the 21-vote requirement and induce the players to return to the business of playing ball rather than strike under, say, an interim proposal like that suggested by Angelos.

In the end, the players will probably prevail, because they are blessed with the ultimate edge: the gift-from-the-gods talent to hit and throw a baseball better than anyone else in the world. No one in his right mind would spend a beautiful August Saturday in the bleachers at Wrigley Field cheering 27 men in suits -- plus the mercurial Marge Schott of the Cincinnati Reds -- as they bicker over revenue sharing. But put Ken Griffey or Barry Bonds or Frank Thomas in a Motel Six parking lot in North Dakota with a bat and ball, and fans will flock. Maybe Greg Maddux or Jimmy Key will show up to do the pitching. That's the enduring glory of baseball -- it has survived war, fixed games, the Depression, racial segregation, beer commercials and artificial turf. A sign held aloft at Yankee Stadium last week said it all: THE GAME IS PERFECT. IT'S THE PEOPLE WHO SCREW IT UP. So even as sad-eyed fans brace for a season or two sabotaged by strike, there is comfort to be found. After all, it's only 18 short months until pitchers and catchers report for 1996 spring training. Sob!

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: HOW MUCH IS THAT RBI IN DOLLARS?

BUDGET VS. PERFORMANCE

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CREDIT: Source Forbes, Business Week, AP

CAPTION: BIG PAYOFFS COMPARED

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: Sports Illustrated}]TIME Graphic by Joe Lertola, Deborah Wells, Jonathan Abbey, Lamarr Tsfura

CAPTION: WEALTHIEST OWNERS

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: Major League Baseball Players Assoc.}]CAPTION: SOARING SUMS

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: AP}]CAPTION: THE PAY PYRAMID

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CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 600 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Aug. 4 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 4% Not Sures omitted

CAPTION: Who is more to blame in the current dispute, baseball players or owners?

Are major-league baseball players paid too much?

Are the profits the team owners make too high?

With reporting by John Dickerson/New York, Janet I-Chin Tu/Washington and David S. Jackson/Oakland