America's national pastime saved, for the moment
Mike Marchand
Undistinguished Alumnus
All last week I was geared up to write my first column of the year about the impending baseball strike. Lo and behold, however, hell apparently froze over and the owners and players settled, averting a disastrous work stoppage and, temporarily at least, moving the metaphorical knife away from their own throats.
But in many ways, the damage had already been done. Two days after last year's incredible World Series, where the Arizona Diamondbacks triumphed over the New York Yankees in seven thrilling games, baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced two of the 30 major-league teams would be contracted. This served as the first firing shot in what would become a 10-month Cold War between the owners and the players' union, a black cloud that hovered over every aspect of the game.
Great baseball moments like Barry Bonds' 600th home run, the fantastic seasons of pitchers Curt Schilling and Derek Lowe and the former contraction candidate Minnesota Twins' domination of the American League Central Division were overshadowed by the same old posturing and posing we've all seen before.
This was all even before the players' union announced a strike date of Aug. 30. The fact that the Hatfield-McCoyish feuding was eventually ended and that a bargain was struck was almost anticlimactic.
The very idea that the players were willing to strike again and risk another cancellation of the World Series, and even worse, the lack of the national pastime on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America, was so offensive and repugnant to many fans that they simply withdrew even further from the sport they loved. The cries of, "please don't strike" were matched or even exceeded by the angry, "go ahead, strike, the hell with you all."
What exactly were the players fighting for? What could have been so massively, monumentally important that the players would rather not play at all than surrender to and accept? A salary cap. So, in essence, the players would rather walk out than tell Alex Rodriguez that he can "only" make $15 or $18 million, and not $25 million.
Forget that even if players are limited in the revenues they can draw from baseball, they can still pursue multimillion-dollar endorsements, like Derek Jeter for Gatorade, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Sammy Sosa for Pepsi or Mr. Rodriguez for Radio Shack. Out of all the things the players' union could be fighting for, they chose to stake their claim on the narrow self-interest of its wealthiest members.
Look, I'm all for the free market and for players getting paid what they're worth. But it's become clear that the skyrocketing player salaries are a detriment to the game, making it so that many teams cannot compete with the big-market clubs. Asking superstars to sacrifice some of their riches and scrape by on a few million dollars less annually in order to revive the health of the institution from which they've become so wealthy shouldn't be such a bitter pill to swallow.
I need to stop here for a moment, because anytime anyone makes the argument that money rules baseball, and that small-market clubs have no chance of competing in the modern baseball era, disagreements invariably rise pointing that out. Since the Minnesota Twins, a small-market team, rule their division, and rich teams like the New York Mets and Cleveland Indians are sucking eggs, it "proves" that money isn't all-important.
But any system is bound to have some aberrations. The simple fact is that since the strike of '94, every World Series team had a payroll in the top 10, and every world champion had one in the top five. The Twins are good right now, but they don't stand a chance against a team like the Yankees in the playoffs. And they won't have the finances to hold on to their budding superstars when they become free-agents in a few years. It's revenue inequity that is the core problem.
So baseball finally wised up a bit and slammed on the brakes before driving the national pastime off the cliff. But it remains to be seen whether or not the agreements they've come to will actually do any good, or be like, say, Notre Dame's new alcohol policy — a wonderful idea in theory, but simply ineffective or detrimental in practice. There's more revenue sharing, but no team salary maximums and minimums, and no individual salary cap. The situation may not change, and may even get worse.
Baseball's hardest task now, more difficult than any intense labor negotiations or serious number-crunching, will be how to invite fans back who, although they may love the game, have been alienated and angered by its recent legacy of multimillion-dollar pissing contests.
The fact that there won't be another strike for the forseeable future is good, but it's only a first step. Not once in the announcement of the deal did Bud Selig ever mention the fans. And Friday saw empty seats in Wrigley Field for the Cubs-Cardinals game, and tickets being given away at Fenway Park for the Red Sox-Yankees contest. Both of those games are usually automatic sellouts.
The whole purpose of the sport is for the fans' entertainment. Baseball may have stopped its ship from capsizing, but if they don't point it in the right direction, it can still strike out.
Mike Marchand, class of 2001, works hard for the money, so you better treat him right. Miraculously, he still has his e-mail address, Marchand.3@nd.edu, so you can still direct responses there. His column appears every other Monday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, September 2, 2002
