New Parks Could Sustain Labor Peace

With the last week of the 2000 season, the Milwaukee Brewers and Pittsburgh Pirates will be popping champagne and moving out of “economically obsolete” ballparks, joining a renaissance that began with Camden Yards in 1993 and will find more than half of the 30 major league teams playing in new or renovated facilities by 2002.

Detroit, Houston and San Francisco made the move this year. The Brewers and Pirates come next year. Cincinnati and San Diego follow, providing the Padres and the city can resolve financing problems.

Unlike the teams that have already made the move into new facilities, Pirate Chairman Dick Freeman said Pittsburgh and Milwaukee are unique.

“We’re the first legitimate small-market teams, teams that rely on ballpark revenue without major TV income, to get new parks, and it definitely changes the dynamics,” Freeman said. “It doesn’t put the Pirates in a category with the Yankees and Dodgers, but it does put us on a par, at least, with many of our competitors. It doesn’t guarantee success, but we would have been guaranteed to fail if forced to continue to play in Three Rivers Stadium.”

With the improved revenue streams of Pittsburgh’s PNC Park and Milwaukee’s Miller Park also comes major debt. The sweep of new parks has forced cities, states and clubs to borrow significantly, leading to a theory that owners--despite their oft-stated hope that the economic system can be changed--will not threaten those improved revenue streams and will not incur more debt by putting screws to the players’ union and risking a work stoppage when negotiations begin on a new bargaining agreement.

The current contract expires after the 2001 season.

The theory is that so many new parks have opened with so much accompanying debt since the 1994 dispute that owners will agree to simple modifications in revenue sharing, the luxury tax and amateur draft, putting off a bid for major changes and the risk of fan alienation through another work stoppage while securing their financial footing and improving their credit ratings amid the improved revenue streams of the new parks.

Neither Freeman, whose Pirates are contributing $40 million to the $215-million PNC Park, nor Brewer chairman Wendy Selig-Prieb, whose club is investing $90 million in the $350-million Miller Park, would address that theory directly. Both said they are trying to do the right things in their respective markets to give their clubs a realistic chance but, as Selig-Prieb put it, “there is no question that we still need help and meaningful change in the system.”

Perhaps, but many close to the situation are betting on a 2001 compromise. No one wants to go to the banks again with the message that play has been suspended.

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Maybe it hasn’t been the year Ken Griffey Jr. envisioned when he went home to the Cincinnati Reds. The Seattle Mariners could be headed for the playoffs while the Reds are headed for a long winter. Still, Griffey has become only the fourth player to hit 40 or more home runs in seven different seasons, joining Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Harmon Killebrew, and he is only the fourth to hit 40 or more in five consecutive seasons, joining Ruth, Killebrew and Ralph Kiner.

“Joining the company I did is something special,” he said this week. “But nothing is more special than what I did with my dad.”

That’s a familiar theme with Griffey, a reference to Sept. 14, 1990, when Senior and Junior, both with the Mariners, became the first father and son to homer in the same game.

Now the Griffeys may be headed toward an event even more special, with Senior back in the running as a possible successor to Cincinnati Manager Jack McKeon.