This Lockout Looms as Lucky Break

Spring training used to be Raines and Madlock. Now it’s chains and padlocks. Fence-busting used to be a happy cliche applied to power-hitting phenoms. Now it appears to be the only option left for players who want to start training camp on time.

Baseball’s owners have become the new major league closers. They say they’re going to lock up all the training sites and throw away the key until a contract settlement is reached--which, considering what the owners are asking, could take us to the All-Star break.

Imagine yourself a player with six years or less of major league experience. Imagine being handed this proposal by the owners:

--You give up the right to salary arbitration.

--You give up the right to a multi-year contract.

--You give up the right to a guaranteed contract.

--Your 1991 salary will be determined solely by your statistical output in 1990, using a pay-for-performance formula where ‘X’ amount of hits translates into ‘X’ amount of money. Batting for dollars, in other words.

Note that this formula ignores such contributions as defense and leadership while inherently encouraging player selfishness. Vote this in and soon late September will be awash with young players on pennant contenders failing to hit behind the runner because a jump on the pay scale is only one more pump away.

Anything else?

Just two more things. The owners also want a salary cap, which will further impede you once your six years are in and you can become a free agent, and a system of revenue sharing that is far inferior to the current program endorsed by players in the NBA.

Can you imagine yourself making a mad dash for the dotted line?

Neither can the Players Assn., which is why no one is banking on spring training starting on time.

But then again, worse things could happen.

Spring training could start on time.

With the exception of Gene Mauch, maybe, and all the Rotisserie nerds who’d rather watch fungoes than Elle Macpherson, almost everyone agrees that spring training is one overlong, overwrought exercise in tedium. Where one month would easily suffice, baseball attempts to stretch into seven weeks, apparently assuming that the sport isn’t boring enough already.

Strong minds numb, or at the very least, wander. Wally Joyner decides to kill time by playing pickup basketball and sprains his ankle. Jose Canseco challenges the Arizona Highway Patrol to a drag race. Jesse Orosco puts lamp black inside Kirk Gibson’s cap. The New York Yankees rip each other. The New York Mets, seeking greater challenges, hit each other.

The spring training experience, in a nutshell:

Cactus.

Wind sprints.

Sand.

Agility drills.

Dust.

Physicals.

Mesa.

Batting practice.

Yuma.

Intrasquad games.

Chandler.

B games.

Tucson.

Bus rides.

Scottsdale.

Roster cuts.

Many fans and, for some reason, writers, romanticize the myth of spring training. They gag us with allusions of rebirth and simpler times. They claim that spring training reminds them of their youth, which, one supposes, could be true. A lot of us had dull childhoods.

Spring training has its charms. The small ballparks, the unpolished play and the occasional Jim Abbott story can be fun.

Just not for seven weeks.

Proponents of the present snail crawl insist that spring training has to last long enough for pitchers to get into condition. In reality, spring training usually lasts long enough for pitchers to get into physical therapy. Sore arms, sore shoulders, sore backs. If it’s March, then Dan Petry must be on the training table.

What other purpose does spring training serve? To fill the ninth and 10th spots on the pitching staff? To decide maybe one starting job that wasn’t locked up by mid-December?

With the Angels, the themes of the spring, by now, have been memorized many times over.

Johnny Ray and Mark McLemore will gripe about the working conditions at second base.

Chili Davis will work on his fielding.

Jack Howell will work on hitting left-handers.

Willie Fraser will work on another pitch.

Mike Port will try to work a trade for an outfielder.

Mike Port will be caught in a lie: “You can never have too much pitching.”

So much is promised during spring training and so little is actually delivered. Unlike the regular season that follows, teams begin training camp knowing pretty much how it’s going to turn out. Weaknesses, generally, remain weaknesses. Strengths too--unless, of course, the team is unable to bar injury.

Any way you look at it, a stoppage of play in February beats a stoppage of play in June. Right now, the real thing isn’t being threatened. Three more weeks could pass and the same still could be said.

Through their wrong-minded negotiating stance, the owners stand a chance of backing into doing something right. This may be the year we finally learn that spring training can be accomplished without boring everybody involved to tears.

At this point, players aren’t sure what to think. Do they call it lockout?

Or luck out?