Baseball's darkest days

Sporting News, The, April 10, 1995

January 6: Owners reject a revenue-sharing plan proposed by the Player Relations Committee and an alternative plan is introduced by John Harrington, Chief Executive Officer of the Red Sox.

January 18: Owners agree. 28-0. on a revenue sharing formula but condition its implementation on the players agreeing to a salary cap.

January 19: Owners give the Off ice of the Commissioner sole authority over labor relations with the power to hire a negotiator, but agree to suspend the search for a new commissioner until an agreement is reached.

March 7: Collective bargaining negotiations open with chief negotiator Richard Ravitch telling about 75 players that baseball must have a salary cap.

June 8: Owners unanimously approve a salary-cap proposal, details of which are not released. They also agree to require a 75 percent majority for approval of a collective-bargaining agreement reached during a strike.

June 14: Owners present salary-cap proposal to the players, offering to split all revenues, including income from licensing, on a 50-50 basis, in exchange for limiting payrolls to no less than 84 percent but no more than 110 percent of the average team payroll. Owners also propose to eliminate salary arbitration and to lower free-agency eligibility from six years to four with the provision that a player's existing club can match any offer until he has six years of service. Players with less than four years of service would be subject to an escalating scale of minimum salaries. The proposal calls for a seven-year agreement, with the salary cap to be phased in over four years.

July 18: Players reject salary-cap proposal, ask owners to lower the arbitration threshold to two years, eliminate restriction on repeat free agency within five years and raise the minimum salary to the $175,000 to $200,000 range.

July 27: Ravitch rejects players' proposal. Players vote to give their executive board the authority to set a strike date.

July 28: The union's executive board unanimously votes to set an August 12 strike date.

August 2: Players learn owners failed to make an August 1 payment of $7.8 million derived from All-Star Game revenues to the players' health and benefit plan.

August 10: Talks break off.

August 12: The strike begins after the August 11 game between the Mariners and A's. Both sides agree to federal mediation.

August 19: The sides agree to send representative groups of owners, players to negotiating sessions.

August 24: The Players Association releases a study prepared by Stanford economics professor Roger Noll in which he says "baseball is financially healthy" and "the claim of widespread disaster in the sport is pure fiction."

August 25: The owners denounce the Noll Report as the work of someone who is not "an impartial and independent observer."

September 2: Acting Commissioner Bud Selig announces a tentative September 9 deadline for canceling the remainder of the season if there is no agreement.

September 8: The Players Association presents a proposal calling for escalating taxes of up to 2 percent on the 16 clubs with the largest payrolls and on the top 16 big-market clubs, determined by revenues, with the monies to be distributed to the 12 lowest clubs in each category. The players also propose that home teams share 25 percent of gate receipts with visiting teams.

September 9: Selig announces that the owners have rejected the players' proposal, but he postpones cancellation of the season.

September 14: Owners cancel the remainder of the regular season and all postseason play.

September 22: Selig and Donald Fehr, Executive Director of the Players Association, testify before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on a bill to remove part of baseball's exemption from federal antitrust legislation.

October 14: President Bill Clinton appoints former Secretary of Labor W.J. (Bill) Usery to mediate the dispute.

October 31: Owners file an unfair labor practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the Players Association for alleged verbal threats made by players John Franco, Bobby Bonilla and Scott Kamieniecki.

November 10: Negotiating teams meet in Rye Brook, N.Y. Owners appoint Harrington chairman of the negotiating committee.

November 17: Owners present a 102-page proposal that replaces the salary cap with a payroll tax. The proposal uses a sliding scale, with any team going above the average payroll level to be subject to a progressive tax that could exceed 100 percent.

November 19: On the 100th day of the strike, talks recess with the players declaring they need more time to study the owners' proposal.

November 29: The players decide not to offer a counterproposal. Owners announce their intention to hold spring training as scheduled and to open the season using replacement players if an agreement is not reached before then.

November 30: Owners accept Usery's suggestion not to declare an impasse in the collective bargaining process and not to impose a salary cap if an agreement isn't reached before December 7.

December 6: Usery urges the owners not to implement a salary cap unilaterally.