ANALYSIS : Lockout: Plenty of Blame Shared

The health and stability of baseball can be measured in dollars--but not a lot of sense.

On one side are the owners, with 1990 revenues anticipated to be $1.2 to $1.5 billion for a full season. On the other are the players, with a 1990 average salary of more than $600,000.

But they have managed to blow most of spring training and, apparently, the start of the season in a face-saving, pride-saving squabble over what the Major League Players Assn. estimates to be another $8 million to $12 million a year if players with more than two years but less than three of major league service were eligible for salary arbitration.

The players view it as something of a moral issue. The owners talk about economic control. It is Day 25 of the spring training lockout with no end in sight.

A negotiating process that began in mid-December is approaching its fourth month. Revenue sharing might be off the table, but there seems to be plenty of blame left to be shared.

The biggest share probably would be voted the owners, who are asking the players to help create a system that will help the owners control themselves.

Having failed to sell revenue sharing, the owners seemed determined to wage war over arbitration. And equally determined, perhaps, to test the solidarity of the union--perhaps even to break it by sacrificing a month or two of the season, costing the players pay.

Blame sharing?

Here’s a possible distribution:

THE OWNERS

At a time of unprecedented prosperity and popularity for the national pastime, they were doling out multimillion-dollar contracts faster than you can say “ego.” They then tried to restructure the economic system with a revenue-sharing plan designed to eliminate arbitration and modify free agency.

It was accompanied by a pay-for-performance salary system that failed to account for character and defense. It produced the seemingly long-planned lockout aimed at preventing the pressure and economic evils of another mid-season strike by the players.

Cynics might say that the owners may know greed, but little about timing.

They sought immediate implementation of revenue sharing while floating in black ink, unable to answer such union questions as, “Why do we need this?” and “Where are the problems?”

But pursue it the owners did, seeming to waste two months on a proposal that almost all evidence indicated wouldn’t fly, and ultimately invoking the lockout they defended as a positive option in collective negotiations, an instrument of leverage.

Why, it might be asked, a lockout when the players have nothing at stake financially? What has it done except alienate fans and businesses in Arizona and Florida?

There is no evidence to suggest it intimidated the leadership or membership of the union, but it did give union zealots a cause. And it has made the difficult process of negotiation more difficult, eventually telescoping the talks into this week’s crisis attempt to save the opening of the season.

Why, it might also be asked, create and operate in that type of atmosphere at a time of unbridled health? At a time when the owners and commissioner have been publicizing the need to build a better relationship with a union that lost trust in management during the winters of collusion and the negotiations of 1985, when the clubs, by all accounts, made misleading claims of financial distress.

Revenue participation and pay for performance were shelved, but the beat went on, the owners offering a variety of concepts designed to modify or restrict arbitration and salaries, but which did nothing more than continue to sour the union and delay talks.

In addition to this strategic inconsistency, there seemed to be no one person in charge of selling the owners’ program. The players who sat in on negotiations emerged shaking their heads, muttering about a lack of management leadership and authority.

One day it would be Commissioner Fay Vincent, the next his deputy, Steve Greenberg. One day it would be Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and chairman of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, the next PRC general counsel Charles O’Connor.

One day, Harry Dalton, general manager of the Brewers, and Frank Cashen, president of the New York Mets, devised a regressive proposal that so outraged the union that Greenberg was prompted to apologize by saying, “Yesterday didn’t happen.” Cashen and Dalton didn’t return to the talks.

At literally the 11th hour Wednesday night, with opening day on the line and the union having proposed what seemed to be a legitimate compromise on arbitration eligibility, apparently the hawks stuck their talons in the players’ hide.

The PRC is made up of five club owners and president Fred Kuhlmann of the St. Louis Cardinals. Four of the owners--Carl Pohlad of the Minnesota Twins, Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, John McMullen of the Houston Astros and Selig--are considered the most aggressive supporters of revenue sharing--Selig having helped author it--and economic change.

Whenever the PRC assembles, the voices of reason, moderation and compromise--Vincent, Greenberg, O’Connor, Kuhlmann and PRC member Fred Wilpon, co-owner of the Mets--seem to fade. It is difficult to believe but must be assumed that the hawks speak for the majority of owners. No rollback of arbitration eligibility. No compromise that includes restoration of arbitration for players with fewer than three years’ service, no matter how limited.

Eventually, of course, there will be a settlement, but at what price to the fans and damage to the union? There seems to be an obvious element among ownership that doesn’t care about that damage to the union. Test it. Break it. Some believe that has been the hidden agenda all along.

THE PLAYERS

The players didn’t create revenue sharing. They didn’t devise the lockout. They only asked for protection against collusion and improvements in the status quo, along with the return of that year of arbitration eligibility they gave up in 1985 as a concession to the owners’ claims of financial distress.

But this is a union conditioned to winning, to getting its way, and during these negotiations its representatives seemed to create the same sense of winning and losing, of saving face, that they accused the owners of doing.

They turned the arbitration issue into a morality play that generally has no place in the hard-core world of labor negotiations. And, when given the chance to accept or propose a compromise by Vincent 10 days ago, they passed--believing, perhaps, that they would eventually have it all their way again.

Was 1985 a “profound larceny” on the part of the owners, as the union’s associate general counsel, Gene Orza, has said?

Executive Director Don Fehr asked if any self-respecting union should be expected to accept a situation that has seen industry revenue increase $500 million since 1985, while the average salary of players with more than two but fewer than three years of major league service has decreased 41% because the players, responding to the owners’ financial distortions in 1985, gave up a year of arbitration?

The rhetoric is compelling, but the fact is that players with only two-plus seasons are still averaging $219,000. And there is also this: 1985 is gone, as is 1976, when the owners--over the warnings of Gene Autry and Charles Finley--accepted the system of arbitration as part of the bargaining agreement.

In protesting the regressive aspects of revenue sharing and pay for performance, the union said it would not turn back the clock and give up rights earned in fair bargaining.

The agreement of 1985 might not represent fair bargaining to the union, but can it legitimately expect the owners to turn back the clock, to give back that year of arbitration, which they claim was not yielded by the union as a concession but in exchange for major increases in minimum salary and pension contribution?

Having warded off all of the salary caps and modifications, does the union have to win on the arbitration issue, too? Aren’t the improvements the union is sure to receive in other areas enough?

Trust is important. By rolling back that year of eligibility the owners would do much to restore it. But perception is important, too. For once, a public that sees only dollar signs seems to understand that the players had no part in creating this mess.

The long battle to get the year of eligibility back might have cost the union that favorable perception.

THE COMMISSIONER

Still measuring his scope of power and constitutional footing, Vincent has been active at the bargaining table, trying, in his own words, to be helpful.

He has seemed to be that and more, offering suggestions, working privately on compromises, keeping the parties talking, maintaining the conciliatory tenor, extensively employing Greenberg, an attorney and former player agent who has had a long relationship with Fehr.

And refreshingly, unlike previous commissioners, Vincent has not been coy about his position. He is a mediator who represents the owners. And in that regard, unlike predecessor Peter Ueberroth, he has seemed unwilling to challenge the inherent impotency of the office.

Although he encouraged the owners to move on from revenue sharing, he has adhered to the lockout strategy that was created while he was deputy commissioner under the late Bart Giamatti. He talks sympathetically about the fans, expresses anguish in regard to business losses in Arizona and Florida, but the lockout lingers.

His attempt to lift it in exchange for a union pledge not to strike seemed sadly ill-conceived. If sincere, it emerged as strictly a public relations ploy when there was no attempt to formally propose it to the union and work out the problems before staging a news conference.

It was also viewed, even by some on management’s side, as a show of weakness. The bold move, they contend, would be to lift the lockout without a pledge, leaving the union to decide if it wants to carry the burden of a work stoppage, a risk Vincent has said he won’t take.

It also seems apparent that he has been unable to gain complete control of the PRC hawks, nor to revise the negotiating strategy so that the union would be certain whom it was working with.

On Day 25 of a lockout that many on both sides believe should not have been enforced--and never have lasted this long--a settlement is probably within reach.

Management is willing to give the players in the two-three year category the dollars, but in a pool arrangement unacceptable to the union, which wants arbitration--certain to create a ripple affect the owners fear, and a bargaining right they are apparently unwilling to yield.

Said Vincent recently: “The union and I agree that there will be baseball in my administration. We just don’t know which year.”

Sadly, there may be more truth than humor in that.