Players, owners all fools as baseball strike looms
PITTSBURGH – Because they’re fools, that’s why. Just answering the question, “Why is there talk about a baseball strike?”
It makes no sense, of course.
The players have never had it so good.
They’re contemplating the possibility of a strike to keep what they have. They’ve earned the riches and freedoms they have through a series of stunning wins in collective bargaining. It started in 1969, when the Players Association first used the threat of a work stoppage and it has continued to the present.
The players have won at every turn and the owners, disorganized and arrogant, have wound up agreeing the current system.
They set up the rules for arbitration and free agency that they now say are killing them.
The owners are sick of being defeated and, fresh from a win over the umpires’ union, want the same kind of satisfaction from the players.
They don’t much care what they have to do to get it.
That’s why two days after a superb World Series, Commissioner Bud Selig was announcing plans to fold two franchises.
That’s why Paul Beeston, a known moderate, was forced out of a role in baseball’s hierarchy. The owners are girding for a major battle and the last thing they want is a conscientious objector in their command center.
Owners look at the NFL and lust for a system that includes salary controls and competitive balance.
Dynasties are dead in the NFL, replaced with spectacular worst-to-first stories like the New England Patriots.
Even better, the NFL has flexibility in contracts.
That allowed the Steelers to cut a productive player like Levon Kirkland when they discovered they had a less expensive replacement ready to take over.
Kirkland had a contract but no guarantee.
Contrast that with what happens in baseball: Derek Bell was a disaster but the Pirates were still obligated to pay him to go away.
Football has Cinderella teams like the Patriots; Baseball has Frankenstein monsters like the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves, who crash the postseason party every year.
A salary cap isn’t even negotiable in baseball so management has tried to circumvent that with a revenue sharing system that will have the same effect.
When the numbers are counted, everyone will be in the same range in terms of spending money.
The players like the free market system, even though it was somewhat depressed last winter.
The big names go to the big clubs (like Jason Giambi to the Yankees) but lower-tier clubs like the Pirates always seem to be throwing millions at mediocre free agents like Derek Bell and Pete Schourek.
Look at the baseball situation from afar and you can see how ridiculous it is that a strike is inevitable.
Even with declines in attendance and TV ratings, there’s still an incredible amount of revenue generated each year.
In an ideal world, the players and owners would form a partnership to find an equitable split.
But it’s tough to partner with someone you don’t trust and the players’ side doesn’t believe much of anything the owners’ side says.
The owners, meanwhile, are blinded by their desire to finally win one.
Logic is absent in this dispute. It seems especially foolish given what’s going on in the world these days – millionaires and billionaires arguing over who gets what.
Whether it happens in August or October, there’s going to be a showdown and it’s going to be ugly.
Why is it going to happen that way?
Refer to the first paragraph, please.
– n –
If you wonder why Craig Wilson doesn’t play more often for the Pirates, you should have been watching during the last homestand.
He had trouble with routine plays at catcher, first base and right field.
There’s a risk in having Wilson in the lineup on anything more than an occasional basis.
The ball always seems to find the bad defensive players.
Remember Mike Diaz?
– n –
Some people have been holding out hope that this would be a 1997-type year in the National League Central.
That was the season when the Pirates stayed in contention with a below-.500 record because the rest of the division had an off year.
The Houston Astros finally won the division but the Pirates were mathematically in the race until the last week of the season.
A quarter of the way through the season, though, it looks as though the St. Louis Cardinals and Astros are stirring to life.
Those two teams are the class of the division and both are capable of pulling away from the pack.
– n –
Todd Ritchie has pitched well enough for the Chicago White Sox but do you suppose there are some fans who figure they might be better off with Kip Wells and Josh Fogg?
John Mehno can be reached at: johnmehno@lycos.com.