Owners Have Won--Time to Settle Strike : COMMENTARY

Now the owners have put their Santa Claus suits over their Grinch suits and are singing, “Don we now our gay apparel.” Boy do they look good.

They’re willing to defer their salary-cap doomsday and go back to the negotiating table, as if they’d ever been there before. Either they’re going to play Santa and permit a compromise to evolve, or they’re going to hide behind this gesture of good will while they’re really the Grinches who stole baseball and gave us replacement games.

History tells us to question their sincerity. They would put a lump of coal in every stocking.

The owners created this deadline, just as they forced the strike, and now they’re making the grand gesture of postponing doomsday. Maybe they think they will look better when the National Labor Relations Board gets to examining the evidence that shows the owners didn’t bargain in good faith.

What they should have done was listen to what the players were saying Monday and Tuesday at Rye Brook and said, “Tell us more.” Except that what they really want is to break the union that has bothered them for 20 years.

“If the owners had any sense, they wouldn’t impose their salary cap, because they’ve already reached their goal and driven down the salary structure for 1994,” said Dick Moss, agent and formerly Marvin Miller’s No. 2 man in the union. “They should say, ‘Let’s go ahead and play the season, as the union offered, and have a study committee.’ ”

Moss’ evidence is the split in salaries that has been developing for the past couple of seasons. Tim Wallach, for instance, recently signed as a free agent for $1.5 million, down from $3.3, after a shortened season of .280 and 23 homers and 78 RBI. What that indicates is that Gregg Jefferies and Paul O’Neill, the guys on top, still command big bucks, but that the owners can play hardball with the others.

Owners have been grumbling for years that they can live with the investment for the important players but the money for backup infielders made them crazy. So here’s the solution: Be smart enough to make the distinction which is which.

“These guys are so silly,” Moss said. “They should say, ‘We’ve won!’ ”

The owners wouldn’t say that. What they’re hearing is the voice of Stan Kasten, who comes to the Braves from the Hawks of the league of the first salary cap, saying they’ve come this far, cancelled the playoffs and the World Series, that they’re not about to give in now.

Then they go out and sign Jefferies and O’Neill and say that’s evidence they can’t live with the present system because owners can’t control themselves. They wail financial calamity. So the notion of restraint gets laid on the players when it ought to be better revenue sharing.

“Every free agent who’s not a superstar suffered a terrible consequence,” Moss said. “That shows you they know how to control free agency.”

For years, the owners have railed at the salaries won in arbitration by players who are less than superstars. They said that was the real sticking point, not free agency. “It’s hardly been discussed,” union head Don Fehr said. Miller said there were ways to guarantee fairness to players other than arbitration, but the owners never made an issue of it with him.

The issues here have been the same since the beginning: One side insists on a salary cap, the other side says it can’t have a salary cap. I certainly can’t argue that players make a lot of money, even too much money considering their role in our society, but the idea of a fixed salary cap across the country in my business, their business or your business is not right. Unless the owners can show good reason why the players should accept it, and they haven’t.

The NBA showed reason for it at the time, and now should find another way. The NFL shouldn’t have it.

Essentially, the baseball cap would eliminate free agency and return player control to the old days, even if at a higher price.

The owners think they can break the union now. That’s why they threw out Fay Vincent, who might have forced a conciliation, two years ago. That’s why they waited 18 months after declaring their intention to reopen the contract before making a proposal. And now they have returned to that as their last proposal before the impasse. They already had forced an issue by withholding their payment obligations to the pension program.

“The union had no option but to strike,” Miller said recently. “The owners had the opportunity of a lifetime to attack the union.”

They changed the voting procedure so that it would be harder for the dissenters to block the group. Peter Angelos, before he bought the Baltimore Orioles, was a lawyer on the side of labor. He’s on record opposing the end of negotiations and scab players. “The owners have tried their damnedest to bring him into line, including keeping two Washington-area applicants on the hook for expansion,” Moss said.

Now suppose they shut down, imposed their impasse and went forward to open the season with strike-breakers and sandlot players. It would be a long time before the NLRB could hear the argument that the owners acted in bad faith, because the national safety is not involved.

“All these years, the one consistent thing about the owners is that they listened to the advice of their lawyers,” Moss said, “and that’s what makes the most money for the lawyers. And I’m a lawyer.

“This is one of the most outrageous situations. The lawyers’ advice makes no sense, but it produces litigation.”

But suppose there is no settlement and the season opens with whomever they can get to pass the picket line. Suppose they had opening day and there was no one to open the gate or turn on the lights. If the players union, one of the most successful unions in the country, were broken, it would send a terrible message to working unionists. Suppose the electricians and the plumbers refused to cross the picket lines.

That’s a pipe dream. But suppose they turned on the lights for replacement games and they showed a lot of empty seats. That’s another idea.

They have another chance to get this done across the table. The owners shouldn’t let it get away.