Ball Four is a landmark baseball book, at least in part because it is set in 1969, the year the players’ union first flexed its muscles. The first paragraph of Jim Bouton’s diary has an ominous ring to it now: “Reported to spring camp in Tempe, Arizona, today, six days late. I was on strike. I’m not sure anybody knew it, but I was.” The union threatened a work stoppage during spring training, and the owners–perhaps feeling guilt after having things their way for almost 100 years–threw the players a bone, granting them a few concessions on a pension plan. End of strike, before anyone really knew it was on, and the players have been united ever since.
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Plainly put, the owners want to reassert their control over the game. The strike would end today if the owners were to agree not to institute their draconian new work rules during the off-season before the 1995 campaign. That they won’t do–at least not yet. The players have maintained the initiative in their conflicts with the owners since at least 1976–most would say since 1972, time of the first real strike, or since that earlier skirmish in 1969–and rightly so. I think we’d all agree that we pay to see the players, not the owners. Yet what really holds the game’s appeal, the players or the teams they play for? That’s a bit thornier–especially for fans of the Cubs–and we now seem headed for a worst-case scenario where the players might go one way and the owners (read “teams and leagues as we know them”) another–as early as next year.
Basically, just to get everyone on the same page, the owners are insisting on a salary cap–limits (high and low) on the amount each team may spend on players. There are many tortuous nuances to this plan–for instance, the owners want the players to pony up the money to pay for the players’ team insurance policies, even though the owners are the beneficiaries of such policies–but the salary cap is really the main and, at present, only item of contention.
And let’s be plain about this, the sport still thrived, growing at an ever greater rate than it did during the owners’ heyday. The sport has been competitive, and so-called small-market teams have excelled; the Minnesota Twins are one of three teams to win two championships since 1978 (the LA Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays are the others). The huge salaries have produced a few fat cats, sure, but also Frank Thomas, more disciplined than ever after signing a big contract last year; Greg Maddux, out to win his third straight Cy Young Award this season; and even Barry Bonds, on line for a 40-40 homer/stolen-base season this year–until the strike.
Arbitration, however, is “fair” by definition, and most of these players earn their million-dollar raises because their salaries are kept artificially low until they qualify for arbitration (usually after their third year in the majors). Arbitration–the process by which a player or his agent submits one salary figure, the team another, and an arbitrator decides between one or the other–is good for the game: it ensures that a maverick owner must pay his players a reasonable wage if he wants to keep players the fans have grown attached to (it therefore prevents, by a system of fair rewards, aberrations like the Black Sox scandal, caused by Charles Comiskey’s low salaries).
