If Baseball Players Budge, Owners Will Feel Heat to Follow

You know the baseball labor dispute is serious when the Maryland governor weighs in with a letter to representatives of both parties, decrying the situation, calling it a “national disgrace.”

Meanwhile, Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent says the two sides, though “overwhelmed with riches,” are betraying a “national trust.”

It seems we’re reaching a consensus that includes everyone except those who play baseball and those who own the contracts of those who play baseball. It’s getting just a little ridiculous. If Danny Ortega and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro can embrace in Nicaragua--the most famous hug, by the way, since Sammy Davis put the squeeze on Dick Nixon--Don Fehr and Chuck O’Connor should at least be able to shake hands in New York.

The funny thing about the national trust’s national disgrace is that it’s so easily resolved. A solution requires only that one side or the other take the high ground, and I nominate the players, because they don’t have as far to climb.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the great issue of the day is salary arbitration. When the negotiations began, the owners had introduced an elaborate pay-scale scheme designed to end salary arbitration, which your average owner believes is only slightly less evil than community-property laws. The players rejected the concept, to no one’s surprise, and the owners backed down. In fact, the owners have backed down a couple of times, so that now they’re pretty much offering the contract that used to be in effect--the same arrangement under which salaries have continued to soar.

So, why are the players objecting? That’s easy. In 1985, the owners, suggesting they would go broke otherwise, begged the players for a give-back on arbitration. The players finally agreed to raise the eligibility requirement for arbitration from two years in the big leagues to three.

It turns out, of course, the owners weren’t poor. Worse, even though they weren’t poor, the owners colluded--breaking all the rules along the way--in order to keep down salaries. They cheated; they lied. And now the players want what they had before the owners cheated and lied.

The players are right. But being right and doing the right thing are not always the same thing.

Under the present system, the average baseball player makes more than $500,000 a year--good money even today. Because of arbitration, the average salary is virtually guaranteed to continue in this dizzying upward spiral, at least for the next several years. So, where do right and wrong enter into this?

The players, who are doing great, should be ready to compromise, no matter how well the owners happen to be doing. Because somebody has to. There are a couple of ways they could proceed. One would be to suggest a compromise for arbitration somewhere between two years and three, devising a formula by which approximately half the players who fall into that category would become eligible.

Another would be to extract some promise from the owners in exchange for keeping the present system. The owners could agree to return the minimum roster size from 24 to 25, which wouldn’t cost them much and would allow the union to do what it should do, which is to increase the number of jobs.

One of those two suggestions should work, and the rest would be easy. The two sides have come to an agreement on collusion, whereby the owners would pay triple damages if again found guilty, and it can’t be very hard to compromise on the pension issue. How big an issue can that be for anyone making $500,000 a year?

Obviously, the owners could give in as easily as the players. It has been documented that the owners’ revenues have jumped even faster than the players’ salaries. In fact, the owners could do the right thing by ending the lockout and agreeing with the players to negotiate in good faith.

Because the central issue is the difference of only one year in arbitration, it shouldn’t be that difficult to overcome. Open spring training and continue negotiations. But the owners won’t do that. Instead, they’ll continue to portray the players as greedy, and almost everyone will agree.

It’s in the players’ interest to play. It’s what they do. Playing is different from owning, which is a glorified way of getting to rub up against celebrities. The players have careers to consider, and the owners, nearly to a person, have important day jobs that keep the food on their children’s plates.

Some players are getting edgy. We’ve seen the quotes from those who want to get this business settled, and we can only guess that there are many more who feel similarly but are unwilling to go public. What baseball has had in the past, where football has not, is an amazing solidarity among high-priced athletes. The great weakness of the last football strike was that the union leadership did not have a good read on the mood of the membership. The baseball union should not make the same mistake. Obviously, things are going well for the average baseball player and even for the below-average player who is fortunate enough to play in the big leagues.

At this point, when the owners have more or less reconvened in the real world, it shouldn’t take much movement to get a settlement. If the players budge, the owners will almost certainly have to follow.