If Soccer Had Struck, Would Anyone Care?

What do stagecoach drivers, elevator operators, golf caddies, door-to-door solicitors, attorneys and soccer players have in common?

Any of the above could go on strike without incurring the interest or ire of the populace.

This is important to note because a strike is only effective if it deprives the multitudes of something in great demand.

You may not have noticed, but the players in the Major Indoor Soccer League came amazingly close to going on strike this week. They settled Friday, which was the original strike deadline day. You didn’t notice? That’s the point.

This reminds me of a situation involving a university basketball team I covered a few years back. One particular athlete was the 12th man on a 12-man team for four years, playing only in the final minutes of blowouts.

Late in this athlete’s senior year, injuries and personal fouls depleted the ranks of his team and caused this player to be awakened and inserted into the lineup with a game actually on the line.

He was not the hero, but he played a role in what would be a victorious finish. He was a part of the story for the first time in his collegiate career.

I approached him after the game, but he turned his back.

“It’s always been my policy,” he said, “not to talk to the press.”

I was startled. Here was a fellow who had spent almost four years with this policy in place, and no one knew it. But for that one miniature moment of semi-glory, he would have come and gone with nary a chance to make noise with his silence.

A strike by soccer players, I fear, similarly would have been unnoticed.

The impending deadline--which seemed to bounce around like a soccer ball--was fast upon us before anyone even realized there was a deadline. The players could have gone on strike without anyone realizing they were even thinking about it.

This was a much different scenario than that which surrounded strikes by baseball and football players. These deadlines were known far in advance and were accompanied by the usual threats and allegations from the antagonists as well as cries of anguish from fans.

The point was often made that society as a whole would function quite well with neither football nor baseball, but ire and interest was stirred in hamlets throughout the 50 states.

That cannot be said of soccer. Interest in indoor soccer is, to my perception, limited to the 12 cities which are homes to MISL franchises. And the interest in those 12 communities is not so rabid that such a strike would cause hysteria.

San Diego, indeed, is the home of the most successful of indoor soccer clubs. The Sockers have won four consecutive indoor championships and seem headed almost unstoppably toward another.

However, the possibility that the MISL would go on strike was hardly the hottest topic of conversation at the city’s water coolers and watering holes. If the topic was sports, the subject was LaMarr Hoyt or Eric Show or Rich Gossage or even the seemingly endless collegiate basketball season. Soccer strikers? Didn’t they used to play in Fort Lauderdale?

Those very same water coolers and watering holes overflowed with opinions and observations before, during and after strikes involving both baseball and football.

Indoor soccer may call itself major league, but it is simply not yet big-time, big-deal.

And so it arrived oh-so-quietly on the threshold of a walkout. The foremost item in this impasse was whether a salary cap would be set at $1.25 million or $1.4 million. This was per team, not per individual. There are probably two dozen baseball players who make more money than entire soccer teams.

The big bucks have not come soccer’s way because network television has not come its way. Meanwhile, the owners also struggle, all the while wondering how they could amass fortunes in business and then lose them as quickly in something called sport.

In fact, indoor soccer is in such a fragile state that an Easter egg is almost Gibraltar in comparison. These owners and these players had to come to terms, or a very nice little sport would have disappeared with a mere whisper of reaction.

The local franchise certainly underscores how indoor soccer is threatened in terms of both finances and credibility.

Bob Bell, the managing general partner, has put together an organization which has been financially unsuccessful almost in spite of itself. Attendance is strong and the team is stronger, yet this man’s future seems to depend on whether or not the Sockers maximize the opportunity for postseason home games.

This is an intriguing necessity, because this team would have to lose 7 of 17 postseason games to carry each series to the maximum number of games. Consider that this team has lost 11 of 44 regular-season games, and you understand the potential for intrigue.

That’s the way it seems to stand. If the Sockers are too successful too quickly, the Bell for whom they have toiled will get vinegar in his champagne glass. This is the man who brought this team and this city and this game together.

The Sockers’ dilemma is roughly equivalent to Rockne gathering the Fighting Irish and saying: “Lose one for the Gipper.”

Of course, should Bell be ousted by his understandably restless band of limited partners, the players have one more course of action they might consider:

They could always go on strike.