Baseball’s evolving, dreamlike season on the field had been overrun by the nightmare taking place off it. The players made good on their threat and began striking the next day. It was the final pitch of the Mariners’ 8-1 victory.Īnd it was the last pitch thrown in 1994. Late on a cool Oakland evening on August 11, the A’s Ernie Young went after a high fastball from Seattle’s Randy Johnson and missed. The owners responded by withdrawing a scheduled $7.8 million payment to the players’ pension fund, which served little purpose except to tick the union off. The players decided to set a strike date of August 12-much earlier than expected-leaving little time for what little chance there was for compromise. Neither side made things easy away from the bargaining table. Plain and simple, the owners were adamant on a salary cap the union was equally opposed.
Progress was not a buzzword as negotiations struggled on. The union tossed the owners’ proposal into the trash as if it was junk mail. The salary cap, in particular, was fighting words to Fehr and the players they had seen what a cap had done for the NBA and NFL and wanted no part of it. Now in charge of the union was 44-year-old Donald Fehr, whose baby-faced, ashen façade seemed incapable of displaying a sense of humor-though when he was handed the owners’ proposal in June 1994, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry foul.
Mlb 1995 record bobok free#
The easy part was done now the owners had to present their revenue sharing plan-one that would be tied to slightly lower free agent eligibility, the elimination of salary arbitration and, most boldly, the introduction of a salary cap-to the players’ union as negotiations began on a new labor agreement. They finally hammered something out, albeit reluctantly, in early 1994. For over a year the owners fought amongst each other over the idea of revenue sharing, with the haves and have-nots taking opposite sides of the issue. (That “interim” commissioner Bud Selig was an owner himself made the issue, in the interim, a moot one.) Solving their second problem-dealing with one another on labor strategies-only served to reinforce the fleeting state of owner solidarity. The owners quickly solved one problem by neutering the duties of the commissioner into a man of no importance, a powerless figurehead who couldn’t nose in on labor negotiations. Baseball’s commissioners were often no help, butting in and settling a strike for the good of the game and their image-but seldom in the Lords’ best interests. The owners often had themselves to blame, their unity frequently crumbling while player solidarity remained remarkably airtight. They had basically gotten the short end of the stick in every labor battle against the players’ union since Marvin Miller brought it to prominence. Major league owners had grown as mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore. The gap between rich team, poor team was widening like never before.Īnd a new labor agreement needed to be negotiated. The lavish television deal with CBS was coming to an end with nothing comparable in sight to feed the kitty. Player salaries continued their skyrocketing pace. was now just a year away from replacing Lou Gehrig as the man who played the most consecutive games in history.īut off the field, there was trouble in paradise. Offense wasn’t merely on the rise it was exploding, with long-standing records in danger of falling. Flashy superstars such as Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, Barry Bonds and Jeff Bagwell were electrifying fans. On the field, baseball was on the threshold of a great era. In instances like 1981, when a sizeable chunk of the season got chewed away by a player strike, the labor conflict had flared into all-out war. Now imagine if that season is killed off halfway through, stripped of the Fall Classic and all its grand achievements-to be forever lost in the tomb of unknown milestones.įor over two decades, baseball fans had grown used to the occasional work stoppage, like powerless villagers enduring chronic border skirmishes between two neighboring, warring countries. 406, Roger Maris clubs 61 home runs, and the Miracle Mets of New York win the World Series. Imagine a single, magical baseball season in which Ted Williams hits.
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