A Resounding Victory for Stupidity

By Paul A. Witteman

There is nothing complicated about most labor negotiations. Two sides with differences sit down and attempt to reach common ground. It's a process in which compromise plays the leading role. The 1994 major league baseball strike falls into another category, however -- one that retired United Auto Workers president Douglas Fraser calls a "death struggle." In such confrontations, destroying your opponent takes precedence over making sweet peace.

Until the 35th day of the walkout, optimists and baseball sentimentalists wanted to believe compromise was possible. But their hopes were shattered by a four-paragraph resolution that interim commissioner Bud Selig released last week on behalf of the 28 owners of the major league clubs. Summary: season canceled, no play-offs and no World Series for the first time in 90 years.

The rationale for pulling the plug, the signatories of the memo postulated, was nothing less than "to protect the integrity of the Championship Season." Such logic had last been employed during the Vietnam War. In order to save the village that is baseball, the owners as much as said, they had to get out the napalm. Donald Fehr, head of the Players Association, expressed no surprise. Referring, perhaps unwittingly, to the intractability of both sides in the week before the cancellation, Fehr said, "There might as well have been wooden dolls at the bargaining table."

Dolls might have hammered out an agreement. The owners and players didn't give each other a chance. Although in the postmortems each side jockeyed fiercely to be perceived by incredulous baseball fans as the aggrieved party and as advocates of accommodation, compromise had no place on either team's lineup card. When the season began, the owners wanted a salary cap. Not surprisingly, the players wanted the free market to continue to determine whether a banjo hitter batting .220 with a good glove could command $1.5 million for part-time work. When the season was terminated, nothing had changed.

Aside from the irony of a labor union's calling for the application of the laws of capitalism while the owners sought to stifle it, there is little to amuse a fan about the dispute. There is no evidence that either side cares about the fact that most Americans think of baseball as a kind of public asset, like the national parks.

Instead, each side seems to be hunkering down for a long winter's war of attrition. The owners hope that a player strapped for a payment on the cabin cruiser or the chalet in Sun Valley, Idaho, will be more amenable to their point of view come February. The union thinks owners, deprived of the revenue that off-season ticket sales generate, will cave in. Meanwhile, the union has begun to make payments to its members from a $200 million strike fund. Neither side shows an inclination to blink.

At some point the owners may choose to impose their last offer, as is their right under the law. If few players break ranks, the owners could open their training camps to minor leaguers. That would lead to picket lines at spring training and charges of union busting by the Players Association. The issue would move to the courts. By then the 1995 season would be in guarded condition, and the game itself might be moved to intensive care.

Before that happens, the dispute will get a once-over in Congress, the body that can tinker with the exemption from antitrust laws granted to the sport by the Supreme Court. This week Texas Democrat Jack Brooks convenes the first of what are sure to be numerous committee hearings on the question of removing the exemption. Lest fans get their hopes up, they should realize that owners are not unduly worried about the prospect of losing the exemption. Congress prefers the stability of a status quo. Players, for their part, are not holding their breath.

A more promising line, in the opinion of veteran auto negotiator Fraser, is to call for binding arbitration. "Public relations is very important during this next stage," he says. "If the owners reject the offer, the pressure is on them again to come up with something new. From the players' standpoint, the risk is that the third party could decide against the players."

However the strike is settled, fans will render the final verdict. Dodger pitcher Orel Hershiser believes they will come back. "I think if your favorite restaurant shuts down, you go back when it reopens because you like the food." Perhaps. Somebody in Boston last week appeared to have a different point of view. Under cover of darkness, this person snuck past security guards at Fenway Park and made off with home plate. What he left behind could serve as a haunting epitaph to an enterprise few think still worthy of being called the national pastime. It was an ugly hole in the ground.