The American inexperience

Sporting News, The, Jan 2, 1995 by Bob Klapisch, Gale Sayers, Jim Bouton, Dick Williams, Bob Costas, Don Imus, Dave Kindred, Curt Flood, Nancy Lieberman-Cline, Mark Murphy, Tony Murdaugh

The baseball strike is slogging through its fifth month with no resolution in sight. When the owners declared an impasse last week and imposed a salary cap, it appeared to guarantee that the 1995 season would start as the 1994 season ended -- with players and owners steeped in mistrust and their own self-righteousness. Will this strike ever be settled? Does anyone still care?

With a lawsuits and hearings and National Labor Relations Board injunctions all on the horizon, THE SPORTING NEWS reached out to a cross-section of Americans to ask if baseball can somehow rekindle its love affair with the public. That's assuming the strike is settled. If it isn't, will fans accept the idea of replacement players?

The panel includes athletes, members of the media, academia and the person who's most directly affected by the strike: the fan. Everyone had a particular passion about the strike, some pro-labor, some pro-management, but the unanimous sentiment was that baseball is damaging itself, perhaps beyond repair.

So the question is: Can baseball recover from this strike? Could it recover from a worst-case scenario, in which the season begins with replacement players?

Gale SAYERS

Gale Sayers is a former Chicago Bears running back, who set an NFL record with 22 touchdowns in his rookie season, 1965. His most memorable game was on December 12, 1965, when he scored six touchdowns against the 49ers, prompting George Halas to call it "the greatest exhibition I have ever seen by one man in one game." Sayers was named by the Pro Football Hall of Fame to the All-Decade team of the 1960s. Today, he is the owner of a computer firm in Chicago.

I think baseball will be able to reclaim its fans, mostly because fans are so gullible. Let's face it: We all love the game and many of the players in it. So in that respect, I don't think baseball will have much trouble in returning to its past popularity. If there are replacement players involved, however, I think the major leagues face a long-term problem. Initially, I believe fans will come to games played by replacements, mostly out of curiosity, but I think the level of play will be such that fans will eventually lose interest. I remember in the year of replacement players in the NFL, fans pretty much stayed away. Even Philadelphia, which had a pretty good team of replacements, wasn't able to draw more than 20,000 a game, and that was once a week. The only replacements the major league fans would be interested in is former stars -- if they wanted to cross a picket line -- or else local players, maybe college kids, who had some appeal to fans in that area.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about the strike. I used to be a player, but now I'm a businessman in the computer industry. I think the owners have created their own problems by renegotiating contracts before they expire, and that's created these incredible salaries.

As for the players, how much can they possibly spend? Three million a year, $10 million a year? It doesn't seem to end, yet they're willing to kill the golden goose. The players these days seem to have everything going for them, including a terrific pension, and they want even more. Even though the fans are rooting for a return of baseball, I can't believe a single fan has any sympathy for the ballplayers. Not one bit.

Jim BOUTON

Jim Bouton is a controversial former Yankee who is best known for writing "Ball Four" in 1970, the first behind-the-scenes book in baseball history. Bouton was ex-communicated from the Yankees family for detailing Mickey Mantle's night life, but he remains an important part of the club's golden era. A hard-throwing righthander, Bouton won 21 games in 1963 and beat the Cardinals twice in the 1964 World Series. More recently, Bouton has co-written a novel, "Strike Zone" with Eliot Asinof, and is the creator of Major League Chew, baseball bubble gum for kids.

I think baseball can recover from this strike if the owners acknowledge that they're asking for something unreasonable and the players are not to blame for this. In fact, the players are simply fighting for the same rights the owners had on the way to making their own millions. The owners should apologize to the fans and take responsibility for the strike. If they do that, the fans won't be as angry with the game, and I say that for two reasons: First, it's the correct and proper thing to do, and, second, it's good business; the players are their product.

Believe me, the players aren't going to give in; it's the owners who are going to be the ones to retreat. The question is, will they give in magnanimously, or will they continue to portray the player as greedy, which really isn't in their interests to do so? They should yield right now, right here and apologize and behave like every other businessman in the U.S.: learn how a budget works. If the negotiations come to an impasse, all the owners are doing is inviting another baseball league into existence, and whatever bad things happen to the major leagues as a result of that, the owners deserve. If the owners go as far as to press for replacement players, I think they're going to be hard to find. Minor leaguers have to be rooting for the strike. because they're the beneficiaries of the strike, and it'll be hard to get the current major leaguers to cross the picket line. I guess there will be a few idiots who will cross, and they'll come in three categories: First, there'll be guys who don't understand the issues; second, purely selfish guys; and third, guys who made some foolish investments and are desperate for money and will do anything to save themselves. But I don't think there are too many of that category around.