Peace on the Diamond

Baseball fans, grumbling and diminishing, finally get a break: at least four years of labor peace between the players and the owners. The only strikes will be between the letters and the knees.

Some fans may never forgive major league baseball for the 1994 walkout, which sacrificed the World Series that year. What baseball needed then, and still needs now, is an independent commissioner, an outsider with legitimate power, no puppet of either side, who can referee disputes and lay down the law.

Interim Commissioner Bud Selig, who owns the Milwaukee Brewers, implored his fellow owners to take the deal that eventually was accepted Tuesday. It includes a luxury tax on teams with high payrolls and revenue sharing to help teams in smaller markets, all intended to spread around the wealth. The owners had rejected the same deal three weeks earlier. Several club executives said they couldn’t afford it, including Chicago White Sox boss Jerry Reinsdorf, who recently broke the bank by working a $55-million, five-year deal with mercurial slugger Albert Belle.

Players union representatives are expected to sign off on the agreement when they meet Monday in Puerto Rico. New features designed to boost attendance include interleague play. In Southern California, this means that a “freeway series” between the Dodgers and the Angels will no longer be mere exhibition games.

Now that the specter of strikes has been lifted, owners and players need to think fan-friendly. Schedule more day games, especially during playoffs and the World Series. Games that finish before bedtime would let a generation of kids grow up with the pastime.