Aesop would have loved major league baseball’s labor relations. The constant bickering between fat-cat owners and high-priced players would make for many a telling fable.
Hope emerged Monday from the players’ side when the union’s executive board decided not to take the inflammatory step of setting a strike date. Talks between the players and owners are scheduled to continue today, with signs that a compromise may be reached so the season can continue.
A strike would mark the ninth work stoppage since 1972, and the entire postseason could be scrapped, as it was during the strike of 1994.
At the heart of the current showdown are two key issues: Owners want to slow the growth of salaries by instituting a 50 percent tax on team payrolls that exceed $98 million, and create more competitive balance by increasing the amount of locally generated money richer teams must share with poorer ones. Players, who have seen their salaries increase 46-fold since free agency was introduced in 1976, want to keep things the way they are.
For the fans, it boils down to one astounding reality: Greedy owners and players still can’t seem to figure out how to divide a multi-billion-dollar pie, and the cost may be the fall pennant races and World Series.
There’s no denying that some teams are struggling to turn a profit. But overall, baseball is booming. Revenue has nearly doubled since the 1994 strike, from $1.87 billion to $3.55 billion last year. That’s just about enough to pay the salaries of Boeing’s entire Puget Sound workforce for a year.
Player salaries have surged beyond the stratosphere. The average salary is now $2.38 million (that’s $14,691 per game over a 162-game season). And who can forget the mind-numbing $252 million over 10 years the Texas Rangers paid to pry Alex Rodriguez from the Mariners?
Uglier yet, most of this recent bonanza has been fueled by public funding of new ballparks. Seattle’s Safeco Field, paid for mostly with taxpayer dollars, allowed the Mariners to turn a $15 million profit last year, and has no doubt added handsomely to the franchise’s resale value.
The Mariners’ miracle run to the playoffs in 1995 created the political will to build their top-of-the-line stadium, and sparked national interest that helped heal the wounds of the 1994 strike. Owners and players would be foolish to think that a similar rebound would follow another work stoppage, especially in the Northwest. With the Mariners in first place, well positioned for another playoff run, local fans aren’t likely to take another lost season without a good measure of bitterness. Sellouts at Safeco would no longer be a sure thing.
After Sept. 11, major league baseball played a leading role in bringing Americans together in the spirit of patriotism. To be on the brink of a work stoppage as the anniversary of that infamous day approaches would show callous disregard for baseball’s role in our society — a role players and owners might abdicate if they can’t come to agreement.
Like Aesop’s greedy farmer who cut open the goose that laid golden eggs, only to find the dead goose empty, major league baseball could kill its most important relationship — the one with its fans.
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