For baseball fans counting down the days until pitchers and catchers and then opening day, this winter has been one of frustration. We know that baseball season will not begin as scheduled. Already the first two series of the season have been canceled as the sport confronts its worst labor strife in nearly three decades.
Players and owners both say they are desperate to reach a deal, but it remains to be seen just how that will come together. For analysis, WAMC’s Ian Pickus spoke with author and journalist John Feinstein of the Washington Post.
I'm ready for some baseball and it doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon. How come?
Well, the owners have been spoiling for this fight for a while. I mean, in many ways, it dates back to the pandemic in 2020 when the players wanted to get on the field as soon as possible and the owners kept saying, well, we don't want to play that many games, we don't want to pay you for that many games. So they ended up having as you remember a 60-game season and almost everyone in baseball knew the owners were going to lock out the players when the contract ended December 1, the collective bargaining agreement ended December 1. And the reason for that is pretty simple. The owners have the hammer when there's no baseball, because the players have only a certain window to play baseball professionally and make the money they make, which is quite a bit.
The owners have lifetime contracts to be billionaires and to own their teams. And so when games are missed, it hurts the players far more than it hurts the owners. It also hurts the fans and people who work in the stadiums and people who own restaurants or bars around the stadiums, all those things, but the owners don't care. They've never cared. Remember that you mentioned the last work stoppage in 1994. It came when the owners tried to unilaterally impose a collective bargaining agreement and that strike didn't end until judge Sonia Sotomayor said no, that's against the law. You can't do that. And so that's the way owners in all sports really, but particularly in baseball, where there has been a strong union for a long time, behave.
We're on a different timeline now than in 1994. People might forget the season ended in August, but the players weren't back until pretty late in the game in 1995.
It was April of 1995. But remember, the owners began spring training that year with “replacement players” who in Union terms are known as scabs. And were prepared to start the season with those teams. And again, only when the case that the players had brought against the owners got to Judge Sotomayor, who was a federal court judge at the time, and she said you can't collectively bargain without bargaining and ordered the owners to open training camps and allow players to come back to work without penalty. And then we had 144 games season that year instead of 162.
So you wrote about the former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent and how he dealt with his own period of labor unrest in baseball. How would you compare the way he approached it with what we've seen from the current Commissioner Rob Manfred?
Well, Fay Vincent was willing to risk his job by being honest with the owners and telling them they were making a disastrous mistake by allowing for another work stoppage. That was the seventh consecutive negotiation that the union had had with the with the owners that led to some kind of a work stoppage. Remember, the 1981 season was split, because there was a strike in mid-season, and Fay Vincent in 1992 told me, and it's a famous quote, now, ‘If there's another work stoppage, fans will view it as a bunch of greedy millionaires fighting with a bunch of greedy billionaires.’ And I think that's the way many fans viewed it, although most tended to side with the owners, because they didn't understand. They just looked at the players making what they were making and don't know how much the owners make. I think that's changed now to some degree because of social media in terms of how fans side with owners or players, but he begged the owners to not try to break the union, which is what they were doing. They were trying to break the union and the owners said, Yeah, OK Fay, and they fired him. In September of 1992 they installed an owner, one of their fellow owners, Bud Selig, as commissioner, and went on to shut the game down in 1994. The current Commissioner Rob Manfred understands that he's making eight figures and being paid by the owners, much like Bowie Kuhn did as commissioner, Peter Ueberroth did as commissioner, Roger Goodell does as NFL commissioner, and he's basically just being a mouthpiece for the owners.
What are the divisions here? I mean, if you could break it down, what are they fighting about specifically?
Money, not surprisingly. That's really what it comes down to. The players want the luxury tax, which is baseball's form of a salary cap, to be raised to a higher level so teams can spend more money on salaries, they want the minimum pay to be raised, the owners have offered to raise it, the players want it raised more. I mean, in every case, there are offers on both sides, and neither side has done much to move toward the middle. But the issue that to me sums it up, though, is players become eligible for salary arbitration after they've been in the major leagues for two years-plus and finish off whatever that season is. And many times, owners have intentionally kept star players in the minor leagues for longer than they need to be there in order to keep that arbitration clock from starting and the free agency clock from starting too. And that's a perfect example of who these guys are, because they're manipulating the collective bargaining agreement to try to deny players the chance to go to arbitration sooner rather than later.
Do you think that baseball runs the risk of doing long term damage to itself with this particular stoppage?
It's already done long term damage to itself. In 1975, that great World Series between the Red Sox and Reds, the last two games averaged 42 million viewers. Think about that number for a second. Last year, the World Series averaged 11 million viewers. Now some of it is because they play the games in the middle of the night because TV wants the latest start as possible. Some of it is the length of games. Postseason games now take often take close to four hours to play nine innings. Used to be when I was a kid, doubleheaders took close to four hours. And the pace of the game, all the pitching changes, and now throw in not starting spring training on time, and starting the season late, whenever it does start. Of course, that's going to hurt Major League Baseball after the last strike in ‘94, ‘95. It took several years for baseball to come back to the attendance levels that it was at which were much higher at the time. And the only two things that saved baseball back then were Cal Ripken’s streak in 1995, breaking Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played, because that was a feel good story for everybody who loved baseball. And what turned out to be the false home run chase in 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Both turned out to be steroid users. But that summer, everybody was captivated by that chase.
Here's what Commissioner Manfred said about that very question:
The entertainment market today is different than 1994. My deepest hope is that we get an agreement quickly, we're back on the field, and you know, we get back into that market and compete effectively.
So my question is, how do you think this ends?
If I knew the answer to that I would call Rob Manfred and I’d call Tony Clark. And I'd say here how you fix this. One point that's important about what Manfred said that shouldn't be forgotten: the owners do not have to lock the players out. They could continue to bargain and have the players at work under the old collective bargaining agreement. They opted not to do that about 15 minutes after the contract expired in December then didn't negotiate for 43 days. What does that tell you? So when Rob Manfred says oh, we really want to be back on the field. They could be back on the field today. If he so ordered, and they could continue bargaining but I think one of two things is going to happen. Either we're going to get an agreement very soon. Because both sides realize, the owners realize more importantly, because they're the ones controlling this, we got to play baseball. Or it's going to be a long, long, sad spring.
I would be remiss while having you on the phone if I didn't ask you about March Madness, it is March after all. Is there a particular storyline you're following as we get close to the tournament now or a team that you have your eye on?
Well at this point in in my life, having covered the NCAA Tournament first in 1977, I hate to admit that, but it's true. I was in college. I am more interested in the mid-majors than I am in the power schools. I love the first and second round games and upsets and the chance for the little guy who nobody knows anything about to go in and beat the power school. We know it happens. It happened last year with Oral Roberts, it happened last year with Abilene Christian beating Texas. Oral Roberts beat Ohio State. I love those stories. As far as the power schools are concerned. Look, I've known Mike Krzyzewski since he was coaching at Army. I consider him a friend. I’ve have covered him for years. I have written books that he was heavily involved in. I would love to see him go out on a high note for Duke. What that high note is, I don't know. They won the regular season title in the ACC which is terrific. His last home game will be in Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday night. That will be very emotional for many, many people. About 200 of his ex-players are planning to attend the game. And then we'll see what happens in the NCAA Tournament. If he went out with one last Final Four or national championship, that would certainly make me smile.
