Players Set Strike Date; Fans Angry

As prediction became reality and baseball’s players union set an Aug. 30 strike date Friday, fans all over, from the vacation White House to the local pub, kicked the dirt in frustration and let out a collective jeer.

For the ninth time since 1972, the nation’s signature sport is threatening to shut down, provoking wrath from the same loyalists who found solace in the game after last fall’s tragedies.

On a day when players and owners seemed to harden their negotiating positions, President Bush, himself a former team owner, bluntly told both sides to compromise. If play is halted, he said, “a lot of fans are going to be furious, and I’m one.”

He’ll have plenty of company in Southern California, where baseball enthusiasts braced for a doubleheader of disappointment. A strike could imperil this season’s rare, synchronized playoff runs by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Anaheim Angels, reducing their achievements to record book asterisks.

“It would be a shame with the Angels finally getting it together,” said Dale Wallace, 52, of Laguna Niguel, chief financial officer of an aerospace company. The team is on course for its first postseason berth since 1986. “They’ll be blowing it big time” by going on strike, Wallace said.

Fans evinced little interest Friday in the conflicting plans owners and players swap almost daily for luxury taxes or other cost-containment measures that have been obstacles to a new collective contract for players. Few had even bothered to pick a side.

“I just think they’re all freaking greedy,” said Tony Hauser, 45, bug-eyed with anger Friday outside Charlie’s Trios in El Sereno. “The players have the best life in the world, but they’re not satisfied.... It’s sickening.”

Many fans threatened to leave baseball forever, treating it like a bad relationship or an addiction they would no longer enable. Signs cropped up in stadiums nationwide saying--often in saltier language--that if the players walked out again, they should expect the cold shoulder when they return, or none at all.

“I think we should strike back,” said Joe Radous, 61, visiting Anaheim from Chicago. “I want these players to play in empty stadiums.”

David Zelaya, a Dodger fan from Culver City, said he’s barely over the last strike, which lingered for 232 days in 1994 and 1995, forcing the cancellation of the ’94 World Series. Average attendance dropped by one-fifth the following year and has never fully rebounded.

Angel fan David Lahodny, 50, attending the team’s Friday night game against Cleveland, said he embraced baseball after the ’94 strike and he’d do it again. But he acknowledged that he’d have to find someone other than his wife, Jackie, to go to games with him. “‘If they strike, I’m not going to come back,” she said firmly.

Mostly, fans wondered why all of this wasn’t settled long ago, when the players’ contract expired in November, and why, with $3.5 billion in annual revenue and average salaries of just under $2.4 million, baseball’s owners and players can’t make a deal.

If baseball folds for the season in two weeks, it would cut off the year’s most compelling plot lines just as they reach their climax:

The Minnesota Twins, a team baseball attempted to contract out of existence, are headed for a division title; San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds is pounding closer to Hank Aaron’s career home run record; Dodger closer Eric Gagne and New York Yankee second baseman Alfonso Soriano are having breakthrough seasons.

Also, at a time when the economy is struggling and thousands of people are being laid off, it’s poor timing for players to walk away from such choice work, said Dan Spafford, 60, a printer from South Pasadena.

Restaurateurs and bar owners around Edison Field, who have ridden the wave of Angel success, lamented the crushing effect a strike could have on them.

“Business would drop 60% to 70% on game days,” said Sergio Miramontes, manager of National Sports Grill. When the Yankees or Boston Red Sox come to town, he said, the place filled up three hours before game time and was a “madhouse” until 2 a.m.

Though a strike would leave a gaping hole for baseball purists, the deadline had almost no effect on less picky sports enthusiasts.

“Who needs baseball when we’ve got football?” said Al Lutu, 43, of Winnetka, Calif., raising his arms as if he were signaling a touchdown.

Lutu and the other more than two dozen patrons at Schoonerville in Canoga Park seemed indifferent to the Dodgers-New York Mets game playing on one of the seven television sets in the beer-and-burger joint. The other six were tuned to the St. Louis Rams-Chicago Bears preseason game.

This month, Mark Travasano paid $3,000 for luxury box seats at Edison Field for an Angels-Yankees game. He and his children went home electrified after the home team pulled out a 2-1 victory. Would he ever shell out that kind of cash again?

“If they strike, no way,” he said.

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Contributors: Hector Becerra, Jeff Gottlieb, Dan Arritt, Ben Bolch, Anthony McCarthy, Carol Chambers, Christina Esparza.