It’s 1 Strike and They’re Out at the Old Ballgame

It isn’t money that 19-year-old batboy Joe Flores willmiss in the event of a baseball strike. It’s the memories.

Like the indelible moment Sunday when Rod Carew cracked his 3,000th hit, and Flores had the luck to grab the bat and wave it in the air for all the world to see.

“I thought then, this guy’s gonna end up in Cooperstown (at the Baseball Hall of Fame). This is history, and I’m a part of it.”

Flores is one of more than a thousand employees at Anaheim Stadium who face unemployment if the second Major League players’ strike in five years gets under way. While disputes over salary caps and arbitration rights kept management and player representatives in meeting rooms Monday, a group of about 20 stadium workers gathered for lunch in the bleachers Monday afternoon and marveled at how little say they have in it all.

In 1981, a 50-day shutdown during a strike left 700 stadium workers--all city employees--out of work.

On Monday, some of the same peanut hawkers, batboys, concessionaires, and suite hostesses expressed fear that a similar nightmare of instant unemployment will greet them when they wake up this morning.

The sting for many lies in the slim hope of compensation. Bill Turner, operations manager at Anaheim Stadium, said the teachers, retirees and teen-agers who supplement their incomes by working summers at the stadium are strictly part time, on a per-assignment basis.

“There is no compensation,” he said. “There are three Rams exhibition games in August, and we’ll give them what work we can if there’s a strike,” he said.

Another big loser during strike time is the city of Anaheim, which loses $47,000 in revenue each time a game is canceled. Nearly half of that is the city’s share of food-concession revenues. The rest is the city’s cut of gate receipts, parking and TV revenues.

Perched on bleachers before Monday’s game, the stadium employees joked about their fate with a gentle wryness.

“This is the last supper,” said concessionaire Barbara Jacobs of Whittier, flourishing a paper plate of stuffed peppers with mock solemnity.

“My kids are gonna starve,” she added.

Jacobs said her husband is currently unemployed. A strike would mean big trouble for her family of four, she says, and her course of action is unclear. “What can you do? What does a strike mean? It means you stand in the unemployment line, I guess,” she said.

She said most players “have no idea” the number of people they affect with their negotiations. “It’s a case of the big guy thinking of himself and taking it out on the little people.”

Several employees expressed exasperation with the players, dubbing them “prima donnas.” “I’m 87, with a pacemaker and a bedridden husband, and it doesn’t keep me from working,” said Bernie McDermott of Anaheim. “So why can’t they?”

Others are determined to be survivors. “I’ve been through this before. I went out and got a waitress job two weeks ago, just in case,” said Barbara Bohanon of Glendora.

Bohanon, for one, bore the players no ill will. “They’re just like me, thinking about their pocketbooks,” she said.

City officials in Anaheim say some of the people hit hardest by a players’ strike will be owners of area restaurants and businesses who pay high rents for a location near the stadium.

At the Catch, a bar and restaurant just a home run away from the entrance to the stadium, general manager Gary Parkinson has developed contingency plans in the event of a strike. They include laying off workers during August, and gearing marketing efforts to area hotels.

He said that in 1981 the restaurant targeted its marketing effort to the stadium, and it was “disastrous for the business . . . . Now we reach out to area hotels to avoid the hills and valleys of a stupid thing like a baseball strike.”

At another favored cubbyhole for baseball fans, the Dugout in the Anaheim Ramada Inn, owner Edward Andres says the fans are feeling disgruntled at the mere prospect of another strike.

“They don’t understand all the ramifications of salaries and all that, they just want to strike out ‘cause they’re taking away something dear to them,” he said.

Andres says he spends time “kibitzing” with the fans, and the overall sentiment is “we’re on a roll in California . . . . The Angels are on a roll, the Dodgers are on a roll, Oakland and San Diego are on a roll . . . . We have it all tied up, and it’s a shame to take that away.”

Feelings don’t run so high all over Anaheim. At the Anaheim Hilton, Dick Buschman, the managing director, says he’s untroubled by prospects of a strike. “I’m a San Francisco Giants fan, and they’re doing so poorly I couldn’t care less.”