Baseballhead:
Not For Nothing

Michael Cox

Happy Labor Day! As a public service to our readers, Baseballhead advises you to find a healthy outlet for your near-strike-induced anger, such as booing Eminem for extended periods of time...oh, sorry, that's already been done.

The past few weeks have been an emotional ride for a lot of people, and my e-mail inbox was chock full of venting readers leading up to Friday morning's "historic" resolution. Hey, if it helps, I'm glad to be here.

Yes, they were petulant crybabies who whined until they got what they wanted. They even threatened to walk out if they didn't get their way. At some point they forgot all about the game itself and became concerned with nothing but money.

That's right, I'm talking about the "fans." Especially that guy sitting in the front-row seat by the on-deck circle at Wrigley Field, holding up the sign saying, "If You Strike, Don't Come Back." (Mister, I was this close to trying to convince your commodities brokerage to give me that seat.)

This clearly doesn't include you, of course, o wise reader -- it's those other fans, some 80% of whom believed for some reason that the players were responsible for whatever impasse in negotiations lead up to the threatened walkout. Never mind that Paul Beeston wasted over a year negotiating -- and virtually completing -- a deal with the players that Bud Selig threw out the penthouse window last spring. Never mind that every step of the way, the players have been the only ones you could actually believe while even Congress didn't believe the owners.

Those fans got so high-and-mighty about being "ignored," yet those same people were so ignorant of the issues and facts that they only started booing Bud Selig after an exhibition game ended in a tie.

On the other hand, the last-moment all-nighter and resulting contract compromise might never have happened if the average "angry fan" hadn't gone off half-cocked, and if sportswriters across the country hadn't been flat-out stupid. In effect, Peter Gammons' irresponsible abuse of September 11 and the morons in Anaheim throwing baseballs and bog roll at their own players all lit a fire under the players' negotiators. This balanced the fire lit under the owners by the very strike threat itself (contrary to popular opinion, that's why a strike date gets set in the first place).

I don't believe the owners and players had any idea what would the media and fans were capable of, had the strike actually happened. Personally, I was hoping for a Jayson Stark hunger strike.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the angriest "fans" didn't even seem to be actual, hard-core baseball fans. Instead, it was the casual "fans" who seemed to do most of the bitching -- folks who were apparently prepared to run straight to the NFL if the Grinch stole baseball (I say again, ewww). They're sports fans, not baseball fans. My only regret is that there wasn't a one-day strike so we could have cleared out the folks who promised they'd leave.

We baseball fans have it in our blood. We knew that a strike meant we'd be playing APBA or MLB 2003, lingering over the last couple weeks of the minor-league season, and attempting to avoid anything written by Jim Litke. (I joke about Litke. He's a wonderful baseball humorist. He just thinks he's serious.)

Over and over, I've heard these peripheral fans say "without us, there's no baseball," which is nothing but bull residue. There will be baseball without whatever number of fans choose to go elsewhere. However, the fans are responsible for at least a couple of things: the big salaries and high (if you believe they're high) ticket prices.

On the other hand, without any players...

From the So Now What (or Now So What) Desk: As for that spankin' new labor deal, it's about as likely to achieve "competitive balance" as a new Tropicana Dome pizza oven, and not just because no other sport has "competitive balance." MLB has had some revenue sharing for a few years now, and little of the money has been finding its way onto the field. The luxury tax (now called a "competitive balance tax," apparently on the principle that if they say it enough it'll come true) is likely to affect a mere handful of teams, while doing nothing to make sure teams like the Marlins actually field a quality squad.

No, the theory Bud Selig is operating under is that the Yankees won't afford to keep, say, Alfonso Soriano, due to the fact they'd have to pay an extra $1.7 million a year above and beyond a $10 million salary. So, as a free agent Soriano would theoretically have to sign with a poorer club who can only afford to pay him $7 million a year. Yeah, I laughed too when I figured that out.

Of course, what will actually happen is either that the Yankees will take the extra $1.7 million bath, or Tom Hicks will again develop temporary insanity and end up paying Soriano $12 million a year because the Rangers are still under the tax threshold. What's more, the luxury tax won't be charged to any new teams in 2006 (that is, the only teams who will pay in 2006 are ones who have also paid in 2005), and there will be no tax at all in 2007.

Cue the negotiations for the next labor deal, in which Selig claims they tried revenue sharing and a luxury tax and they not only didn't work, but the Devil Rays are the reason the dollar is worth only half a Euro. Of course, when a work stoppage is threatened, the fans will once again blame the players.

One of the items the owners gave up in these negotiations was the compensatory draft picks teams currently receive when they lose a free agent. Sure, it doesn't seem like much, until you remember that those draft picks were the cause of the 50-day strike in 1981. It's things like this that have me convinced that there's no such thing as a true psychic, because if one existed then, they would have gone Dead Zone on Selig's ass.

A Promise: Starting next week I go back to talking about baseball for a while. No, it doesn't mean I'm going to stop keeping tabs on America's Wackiest Commissioner, it just means that with some kick-ass pennant races and surprise finishing kicks (what up, Oaktown?), there's actual baseball out there, Soupy.

Of course, there are probably more than a few folks in Boston, Cincinnati and Seattle who considered a potential strike to be sweet euthanasia.

about the author

Michael Cox may have consumed one too many Red Devil energy drinks during the composition of this column. Talk him down at mc@strikethree.com.