Saving Face an Issue in Baseball Talks, Some Experts Say

When baseball’s collective bargaining talks resume Monday, some mediation and psychology experts say the owners and players will begin negotiating an issue of a different sort.

“They are going to have to come to an agreement on the sub-issue--that of saving face,” said Dr. Thomas Tutko, professor of psychology at San Jose State. “Both sides have backed themselves into a corner and they have to find some way to save face, and I don’t think it is possible.

“Both the owners and the players have lost. They are still playing one up, and their object is to try to get across to the American public who is in charge, who has the power. I think they have both lost sight of the meaning of baseball.”

As the lockout enters its 18th day, some experts recently polled believe the negotiations have evolved into a battle of egos.

Others, such as Kenneth Kowalski, a federal mediator in New York, disagree. He says “responsible parties put their egos aside” in negotiations. He believes both sides are doing that.

The experts seem to agree on one aspect of the baseball talks. The main tactic used by the owners in these negotiations--the spring training lockout--has served no purpose.

“The lockout was a symbolic weapon of the seriousness of the owners,” said Brian Flores, district director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in New York. “But I think you have to balance that against their (the owners’) conduct in negotiations.”

“Have they stayed steadfast with revenue sharing or with their arbitration proposal? No. It would seem to me that there are a few cracks in the facade here and there.”

Since the players haven’t missed a paycheck, Flores says the lockout cannot be an effective tool.

“It’s not much of a weapon if I told you as a player you’re not losing any money because I’m not going to pay you anyway. That you don’t have to go out and sweat twice a day and sign autographs for the tourists, but instead can go to the dog track everyday,” Flores said.

Kowalski says that although the lockout hasn’t been effective, it will become a factor in future negotiations as the regular season approaches. Then, he says, the pressure will be on both sides.

But if the lockout was a ploy to give the owners the edge in the current negotiations, it hasn’t worked, according to Dr. Richard Lister, a clinical psychologist from Costa Mesa.

“The players have a terrific edge now, because they aren’t getting paid anyway,” Lister said. “Once the season starts, the edge will change because the players will hurt in their pocketbook. And, obviously, when you hurt in the pocketbook it becomes a mental situation.

“Everyone has bills to pay, these guys just have bigger toys.”

Dr. Jonathon Brower, also a clinical psychologist, says the lockout also affects the players psychologically.

“For athletes, when the time of year comes around that they are supposed to be getting ready for the season, it creates anxiety for them not to be getting ready to play. Because it is a big change, on an emotional level, it’s scary.

“Some of them are getting ready on their own. But it is a big difference emotionally being at a high school baseball field as opposed to being treated like royalty at spring training.”

Any fears of the players were seemingly put to rest in the recent meetings held by Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. In each of the three meetings, the players have left the meeting in staunch support of the union.

That support, however, comes easy for a player, who views the economics of the sport as a basis for his self worth, according to Dr. Bruce Ogilivie, a clinical psychologist who has been a sports consultant for 30 years.

“The ego of a player gets tied up with his worth as a human being,” Ogilivie said.

“A player reads where another player makes a certain amount of money, and then measures his own contribution in terms of salary against that player. It’s an unreality against which they are measuring themselves.”

Flores says that the owners have used the negotiations to test the resolve of the players. Still, he doesn’t believe the players’ solidarity will give them the edge when negotiations resume.

“I don’t think either one of them has the edge,” Flores said. “Neither one of them is winning until they sit down and face the problem ahead of them. In fact, I think they are both losing because they are in the scrutiny of the public eye and people tend to get turned off.”

Lister agrees there is no winner, but says it is because the procedures being used in the talks are wrong.

“The owners and players have put themselves in a lose-lose position because of the adversarial method they use to negotiate,” Lister said.

“One group has their representative, the other has theirs, and they go at it like a court of law. The way they have been posturing themselves, they have come on so macho, that neither side is going to back down.

“It’s the same method they’ve used in the past and it hasn’t worked. They need an outside mediator to preside and get this thing settled.”

That outside mediator shouldn’t be Commissioner Fay Vincent, according to both Lister and Paul Staudohar, professor of business administration at Cal State Hayward and a labor arbitrator.

Staudohar thinks that the result of Vincent’s involvement in the negotiations usurped the authority of the owner’s chief negotiator, Chuck O’Connor.

“The general wisdom of negotiations is that the chief executive stays out of the negotiations,” Staudohar said. “In this case, the commissioner is enough of a chief executive not to get involved.

“In terms of the dynamics of negotiations, you want the negotiator to consult with the chief executive as a buffer. The commissioner was trying to mediate the dispute, and though I think initially he was trying to bring it to a quick resolve, now he seems to have gone beyond that.”

One area of agreement by all is that there will eventually be an agreement, although no one would predict when.

“Nobody on the outside really knows what the real agenda is, but there is an agenda somewhere,” Kowalski said. He believes that pressure from outside forces will increase as the season nears. “Everything seems to revolve around the arbitration issue, but there are four or five other issues. The parties have a good idea just where everything fits, and once it starts to move, it all falls in place.”