Average Fan: Say It Ain’t So, Joe

The average fan--the guy who sits where Bob Uecker sits, the old-timer who tells eyewitness tales of Ty Cobb, the lady who can recite Roberto Clemente’s lifetime stats, the girl who goes to games because she thinks Ryne Sandberg is cute, the boy who worships the ground upon which Fernando Valenzuela walks, the child who watches from daddy’s lap--did not know what to make of this strike nonsense, even as late as Tuesday night. All he or she knew was that if the game was called, it was not on account of rain.

You could have told them about the players not wanting to feel like plantation slaves, or you could have told them about the owners wanting to protect their investments, or you could have told them about the smooth-talking commissioner’s insistence that “the fan cannot go unrepresented” in the fight to keep major league baseball in business. They would have nodded their heads a lot, as if they understood what they should feel or what they were supposed to do. They would not understand, of course. Not at all.

Should they write angry letters? And to whom? Should they vow never to attend another game? And who would believe them? Should they be sympathetic, the way they might with a walkout of auto workers or high school teachers or airline pilots?

Maybe they should just stay home and play with the dog and get the car fixed--or vice versa--until the whole mess is settled.

The average fan must have found it very difficult to detect any real need beyond the greed. Many of them, no doubt, viewed this combat between players and owners as nothing more than material warfare between millionaires and multi-millionaires. The Big Rich vs. The Bigger Rich.

The poor old owners were crying foul and contending that they were being bled to death on a day when one of them, Ted Turner of Atlanta, reportedly was ready to fork over $1.5 billion in cash for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Turner wanted to buy CBS before he decided to buy MGM, so there was every reason to believe that if this deal did not work out, he would move on to TWA or IBM or RCA. In the meantime, he, as one of the owners, was sick of paying utility infielders so much money that they could occupy houses larger than the one owned by the Beverly Hillbillies.

As for the players, only four years had passed since they last carried picket signs, and the average salary had gone up only from $185,000 to $363,000 in that time, so they were annoyed, of course, since they could hardly afford the stretch limos that would carry them to the picket lines.

History was not supposed to repeat itself. Doug DeCinces of the Angels said Monday: “I thought the last one was going to be the strike to end all strikes.” Alas, World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars.

Reggie Jackson of the Angels, one of the players who was prepared to go on strike Tuesday night, is a man who would like to own a piece of a team some day, possibly the Oakland A’s. It will be interesting to see what happens when his workers walk out on him during the player strikes of 1989, 1993 and 1997. “Two million dollars for someone with two years’ experience?” Jackson might say. “Preposterous!” Then again, by that time, that could be minimum wage.

Back to the future: Gramps takes Little Billy to a ball game and tells him about the days when a rookie was forced to sign and play for less than a million bucks. “Why, Billy, there was a time when Don Aase sat out a couple of years with an injury and they tried to stick him with a contract for six figures!”

As zero hour neared Tuesday, Lee MacPhail, Donald Fehr and the rest of baseball’s little rascals went into their clubhouse to hold their secret meetings, and the world wondered whether it would be forced to do without baseball for a day, a week, a month or until 1986. Peter Ueberroth, the high lama, had hinted that he would do whatever was necessary to keep the games going, but nobody knew where he intended to find players, unless he planned to use Rafer Johnson and Jesse Owens’ granddaughter.

Obviously, since there would be no scabs among the major leaguers, Ueberroth’s principal option was to advise the owners to put their minor-league bodies on the field. Retired players were welcome, too, in case Harmon Killebrew wanted to suit up for the Twins, or if Minnie Minoso wanted to make his 17th comeback, or if Jim Bouton was looking for another book to write.

What would the reaction have been from the average fan if the fed-up owners had decided to promote minor leaguers? Would every stadium’s attendance suddenly have resembled Cleveland’s? Would first-place clubs such as the Angels, Dodgers and Blue Jays be willing to run the same risks as the clubs that are running out of time to catch them? Would union activists such as Fehr and Mark Belanger stand outside the player entrances, pelting the picket-line crossers with bricks?

Attendance at baseball games Sunday was fabulous: 54,032 for Chicago’s visit to Yankee Stadium, 46,674 for Philadelphia at St. Louis, 43,796 for Milwaukee at Detroit, 41,630 for Minnesota at Anaheim, 39,049 for the Dodgers at Cincinnati, 36,272 for Texas at Toronto, 35,207 for the Cubs at Shea Stadium, 31,020 for Boston at Kansas City . . . even San Francisco’s game at Atlanta, featuring teams in fifth and sixth place, drew 20,025. It wasn’t April, and it wasn’t October; it was just your basic baseball weekend. Maybe some team was sponsoring Straight-A Student Day or Lithuanian-American Day, but otherwise, it was just another Sunday.

Two days later, the players were about to walk off the job, leaving the average fan in limbo. Forgotten in the process were all the other plain old working stiffs whose lives would be affected, people whose bank accounts would not be fattened by a strike, no matter how it was resolved. Ushers, vendors, security guards, elevator operators, secretaries, accountants, bat boys, ball girls, organists, groundskeepers, receptionists, concession salespeople, ticket sellers, parking attendants, public-address announcers, clean-up crews.

How thrilled these people must have been to hear that the players had agreed to accept $45 million from the owners for their pension fund instead of $60 million. How delighted they must have been that the surplus money would go to the owners who were not turning profits as large as the more successful owners.

How considerate of the owners to drop their insistence on a salary cap for each team. How sensible of the players to stick to their guns on arbitration, insisting that two whole years of major league ball is enough to let an outsider decide how much money they should make.

The average fan could relate to all this. Sure he could. He understood why Joaquin Andujar of St. Louis, who pitched his way to a peachy 6-16 record in 1983, should be able to win 20 games the following season and immediately get a raise from $310,000 a year to $1 million a year. Naturally, if Andujar had won only six games this season, he would have given 700 grand back.

None of it mattered. All Ueberroth and Fehr and MacPhail and friends had to do was settle the thing Tuesday and all would be forgiven, all forgotten. The average fan did not want to choose sides. He did not want to hear that Mike Schmidt of Philadelphia would lose $13,148 a game, because the numbers have become so stupefyingly meaningless that the average fan is convinced Schmidt spends that much on valet parking and shoeshines.

If the strike had been settled at 7:29 p.m. Tuesday and the first pitch thrown at 7:30, the average fan would have been in his seat and would have cheered for his team. If the strike is not settled until next March and the 1986 season opener becomes the first game in eight months, the average fan will be in his seat and will cheer for his team. There would be a lot of sound and fury in between, signifying nothing.

You still do not understand, do you?

The game ends. The totals are tallied. The owners win. The players win. You lose. You, you poor slob, are the average fan.