Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150077
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
The Depression couldn't kill it. Two world wars couldn't kill it. Even all the goats of Octobers past couldn't kill it.
But Wednesday, the baseball strike did what all those disasters, tragedies and outrages couldn't do: It wiped out the rest of a once-special season - and wiped out the 1994 World Series with it.
And what did it, ultimately, was a simple difference of opinion. Owners said they needed a salary cap to survive. Players said let free enterprise take its course.
And caught in the middle, the game of baseball was squashed.
At midafternoon in an otherwise empty County Stadium in Milwaukee, baseball's acting commissioner, Bud Selig, stepped before the microphones to announce a decision he said was accompanied by ``an incredible amount of sadness.''
``We have reached the point where it is no longer practical to complete the remainder of the season or to preserve the integrity of postseason play,'' Selig said.
``It's hard to articulate the poignancy of this moment. ... Lest anybody not understand, there can't be - and there isn't - any joy on either side.''
The economic costs of the strike and its fallout are staggering.
Losses to baseball's owners will be an estimated $580 million, including about $140 million in advertising revenue from the postseason.
The players will lose an estimated $230 million in salary.
The emotional costs might be greater.
You have to go all the way back to 1904 to find the last time the World Series wasn't played. But in 1904, baseball was messing with a glorious tradition that was all of 1 year old.
Now the World Series is baseball's crown jewel. It is the event that gives a season meaning. It is the reason players play, the reason fans watch, the reason owners own teams in the first place.
``The World Series - that's what it's all about,'' said Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling. ``I was just telling somebody today, `It's kind of scary to think that even if I play this game for another eight years, I might already have had my greatest moment in the game.' No individual award could ever approach the dream of playing in a World Series.
``Next to the day I got married and someday having my first child, I would have to say that playing in that World Series last year was the greatest moment of my life.''
But this year, 25 years of labor mistrust have taken their biggest toll. In December 1975, players won the right to free agency, and owners never have completely come to grips with it. This has led to a series of strikes and lockouts - eight in all - without precedent in American sport.
In the end, even the hope of preserving the World Series wasn't enough incentive for the two sides to find a way to settle a strike that started 35 days ago and ultimately will swallow the final 52 days of the season, 669 games and an entire postseason.
``I find that almost incomprehensible,'' Selig said. ``You've got to pinch yourself and wonder if this is really happening.''
It was every bit as real, however, as all the wonderful pennant races the decision will leave forever unfinished.
The true measure of how far apart the two sides remain is that even Wednesday, amid one of the most historic events in American sports history, they still were debating the need for a salary cap.
Said Donald Fehr, head of the players' union, ``The one thing that I keep trying to suggest to people is that underlying this is clearly a belief [by ownership] that, sooner or later, the players will not believe in the principles they obviously believe in, that they will not insist on a free market.
``And if they [the owners] still believe that, then it's only the passage of time that will persuade them otherwise.''
Selig, meanwhile, said it was ``such a sad day'' that there was ``no sense in continuing to air this debate.''
Asked what he would tell fans who wondered why they should come back when the strike is over, Selig replied: ``I would tell them, `You've seen a dispute caused by a changing society. You've seen baseball change like many other industries have changed.' And I would hope the fans understand that we just can't continue to do business as usual.''
by CNB