COMMENTARY : ‘Scab Ball’ Will Leave Some Very Ugly Scars

Madonna will bake a cake for Billy Graham before Congress intervenes in the baseball strike. No way will Congress pass a baseball law, nor should it.

Yet the Arkansas southpaw in the White House proposed such a law forcing owners and players to accept an arbitrator’s decision. Kentucky congressman Jim Bunning, a real pitcher once upon a time, cited election night as indicative of the legislation’s minimal chances: “The message of Nov. 8 was that people wanted Congress to stay out of the private sector.”

Nor is there a chance Congress will repeal the antitrust exemption that allows baseball owners to break laws protecting consumers from monopolists. To quote Marvin Miller, who breathed life’s fire into the players union 29 years ago, “History tells us something.” It tells us the folly done by the 1922 Supreme Court has lasted 73 years no matter who controlled Congress, no matter who lived in the White House and no matter that the Supreme Court itself has begged Congress to end an unwarranted privilege so often abused by baseball.

Miller says there will be no action on arbitration or the antitrust exemption, because Congress is corrupted by its eagerness to please those who feed it status, privilege and large helpings of money:

“You start with the political slush funds. Major league baseball owners are major contributors to politicians. Players are not. Players are citizens only, like the rest of us. But the money is not the only factor. Another factor is, politicians are ignorant. They believe owners who tell them that revoking the antitrust exemption would ruin minor league baseball. In fact, it would be the single most-strengthening thing that could happen.”

There came from Marvin Miller a sigh. He is 77. He should be in the Hall of Fame for work that helped lead baseball to unprecedented popularity. Talking about the game’s troubles these days prompts a sigh of exasperation, for exasperation is the inevitable result of a battle fought reasonably in an arena where reason counts for naught.

Barring a congressional upset of historic proportions--we can write to Congress demanding our representatives vote the right way, not the bought way. Barring such an upset, what’s next for baseball?

Sad to say, baseball’s owners will open spring-training camps and hand out major league uniforms to thousands of scabs.

No more baseball. We’ll be into scabball. The mind reels. Scabs in major league uniforms are a Kevorkian solution to the pain. Has any multibillion-dollar industry ever been so viciously self-destructive? What we have here is “Baseball: The Civil War,” a film waiting to be made by Ken Burns.

Former Reds reliever Rob Dibble says the use of scabs will be “a mockery, a farce.” Sham, fraud and Potemkin villages also come to mind. Major league baseball works as entertainment because its players do things no one else can do. The ball travels faster out of their hands and off their bats. Only their great skills justify taxpayer millions spent to raise giant public stadiums as places for our entertainment.

The use of scabs is so absurd as to be proof that owners couldn’t pick Babe Ruth out of a lineup of Ziegfield girls. What they plan for this spring is the equivalent of Detroit automakers nailing bicycle wheels to tin cans and calling them cars.

Trying to prettify their dirty work, the owners have lied and called the scabs “replacement players.” Businesses that fire their workers and hire new ones have hired “replacements.” Baseball hasn’t done that (because then all players would be free agents selling their skills to their preferred teams).

So instead of replacing players, baseball will use the scabs defined in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary on page 2,022 where we read these phrases: (2): a member of a union who refuses to strike or returns to work before a strike has ended . . . (3): a worker who accepts employment or replaces a union worker during a strike . . . (4): one who works for lower wages than or under conditions contrary to those prescribed by a union--compare BLACKLEG, STRIKEBREAKER . . .

Which brings us to Lenny Dykstra. Of potential scabs, Mr. Dykstra is the most prominent. As every student of tobacco drooling knows, Mr. Dykstra is the Phillies center fielder who 1) lost $78,000 gambling with crackers in a shady Mississippi poker joint, 2) wrapped his $40,000 car around a tree, 3) dropped $47,000 at baccarat while serving a year’s probation ordered by commissioner Fay Vincent for the Mississippi incident.

As if that weren’t extraordinary enough, Mr. Dykstra has become an expert on labor-management negotiations. Anyone eager to learn of the baseball-strike complexities was fortunate to have turned on TV the other night in time to see Mr. Dykstra’s happy face as he suggested players should have taken the Bill Usery proposal and ended the strike.

Never mind the flaws in Usery’s proposal, as seen by congressman Jim Bunning: “The players were frightened that what could happen, did happen--20 years of collective bargaining wiped out overnight. Free-agency rights were cut back; the players’ pension fund was put at risk; players wouldn’t get credit for their service time during the strike.

“We’re not saying to the owners, ‘You can’t have anything,’ ” Braves pitcher Tom Glavine says. “We’re willing to compromise, and we’ve shown that. But Mr. Usery’s proposal was outrageous in many instances. We’d be giving away things we’ve gone on strike for previously. Mr. Usery couldn’t answer any questions about what a lot of his proposal meant.”

Unencumbered by the burden of knowledge, Mr. Dykstra says he and 20 friends plan to get together and “see where it goes from there,” the implication being they all might go back to work, no matter what their union says. “Check with me in April,” he says.

To which Tom Glavine says, In the past, Lenny has told us he wasn’t crossing. But this stuff about just wanting to play--if he’s going to cross, at least be a man and say he’s doing it for the money.