Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407030045
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Pennant fever is a wonderful malady. What has fans in these and other diamond-studded locales feeling really sick is the impending players' strike. Barring any sort of federal intervention, the eighth work stoppage in the national pastime in 22 years is almost certain.
Club owners may be whizzes at selling beer and pizza, renting videos, building ships, selling cars and operating TV networks, but they've made a mess of the business of the game. They create a new playoff format to build late-season interest in more cities, then take 1 1/2 years to make a collective bargaining proposal to the players, leaving them little choice but to strike.
The Major League Baseball Players Association isn't just the strongest union in sports. It may be the strongest union anywhere. The players don't trust the owners, and why should they? The owners always are asking them to give something back in negotiations, and the players certainly won't forget the collusion of the Peter Ueberroth era.
The players would like to keep the status quo, and why shouldn't they? The average player salary is about $1.2 million. Ryne Sandberg's recent retirement dropped to 261 the number of players being paid at least $1 million in 1994. There are big bucks in free agency, bigger ones faster in arbitration.
According to the owners' Player Relations Committee, the boys of summer are getting 58 percent of the game's gross revenues, up from 42 percent in 1989. In instituting a salary cap, the owners want a 50-50 split, and then the big-market clubs will dole out about $65 million to be split annually among the smaller-market teams.
The owners are willing to concede unrestricted free agency after a player has six years of service, but want to replace salary arbitration - available to those with four years in the bigs - with restricted free agency after four and five years. That free agency would include a right of first refusal by a player's current club. Any NFL player of the recent past can tell you that kind of free agency isn't free.
The owners want to be fiscal partners with the players, but the owners don't want the players to help negotiate for that money. The owners want the players' trading card contracts in the pot and do not plan to share expansion fees from the next - Tampa Bay, Phoenix? - growth, probably in 1997. The proposal also calls for the insurance premiums purchased by the clubs on the players to be paid from the players' 50 percent.
How leaderless can the game be? There's still no commissioner. How about ESPN's Peter Gammons? He does look a little like Judge Kenesaw "Mountain" Landis. Anyway, the owners spent 18 months deciding on revenue sharing and the seven-year contract proposal to the players, then asked the players to take a few weeks to study the offer.
The player representatives will meet July 11 on the eve of the All-Star Game, but likely won't set a strike date until after a couple of rounds of negotiations. The players have to negotiate, because if they didn't, fan sentiment would swing against them.
The longer the players wait to strike, the more they get paid. And, if they walk Sept. 30, they will be paid in full for the regular-season and hit the owners where it hurts - when 75 percent of the revenue from the new Baseball Network telecast plan would be paid in the postseason.
The salary cap proposal isn't all bad. The players are guaranteed at least $1 billion annually, even if the gross revenue doesn't reach $2 billion. Clubs currently are paying about $850 million in player salaries. There also are minimum club payroll requirements, forcing a team to pay at least 84 percent of the average team salary.
That would pinch cash-poor clubs such as Pittsburgh, where the Pirates say they also need stadium lease concessions to go with an $8 million loan from city council - or the club may be sold and moved after 107 years in the city.
In '85, Pittsburgh's city council approved a $20 million loan to the team. The money has not been repaid. It's estimated the Pirates are losing as much as $1 million a month. They also owe a $5.4 million interest payment to Citibank in August. The club is about to exhaust a $34 million line of credit with the bank.
The Pirates will get no sympathy from the players. However, using figures produced in May by Richard Ravitch, the president of the owners' Player Relations Committee, the sport has enjoyed a 15-year growth rate of 14 percent. He estimates the average player, if that growth continues, could be paid about $2.6 million in 2001.
The players also figure to strike because they fear that in the off-season, the owners could unilaterally impose a salary cap under federal labor law.
So, a strike isn't just probable anytime from Aug. 16 through the end of the season. It's very likely.
\ Write to Jack Bogaczyk at the Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, 24010.
by CNB