If Players Walk Away, They’ll Walk Alone

I wrote a long letter about how the average fan can show the players and the owners that we won’t put up with this, and then I realized that the average fan is weak and could never be as strong-willed as Major League Baseball.

Strike or not, there will always be someone to pay the excessive price for a game, it just won’t be me.

Sam Rizzardo

Harbor City

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Excuse me for taking sides with the players, but when was the last time one of these clubs went out of business? When was the last time an owner sold one for less than he paid for it? If these rich playboys want to buy teams and subsidize them, why should we care if they’re technically in the red? It’s about as significant as WorldCom having been technically in the black.

Dan Eisenberg

Pacific Palisades

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Funny, but I haven’t heard a word about the millionaire members of the players’ union planning to share some of their revenue with teammates whose bank accounts aren’t quite so swollen. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard the players offering to share any of the endorsement money the game put them into position to make with the owners either.

Bruce Roland

Ojai

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To hear Marquis Grissom say that salary arbitration and free agency are for the “betterment” of the game is total hilarity. Salary arbitration is why mediocre bench players and left-handed “specialty” relievers are making millions. It’s why parking is $8 and a burger, fries, coke and a program will set you back $20.

Free agency is why there is no loyalty among fans, players and teams. The only thing this is all for the “betterment” of is your wallet, Marquis. At least have the guts to admit it.

Please go on strike. I can’t wait to strike back.

Bruce A. McClanahan

Shell Beach

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Tom Glavine said, “The union won’t allow a luxury tax ... that’s a salary cap.” Earth to Major Tom: The last time I looked, the NFL and the NBA were being successfully run under salary-cap structures. Why should Major League Baseball be exempt? Because of its popularity?

It’s time for the union to give up on this one. Even Mr. Glavine must realize that baseball is the fourth-most popular sport in America today, behind the NFL, NBA and X Games.

Robert Grande

Los Angeles

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Nearly 40 years ago, Calvin Griffith, the skinflint owner of the Minnesota Twins, predicted free agency would ruin baseball. More than anything else, the outrageous salaries of players, along with the greed and complicity of owners, have brought the game to its knees.

Ain’t free enterprise great?

Jerome S. Kleinsasser

Bakersfield

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I believe the main problem in baseball today is a lack of pride. I don’t mean the players lack pride in their athletic abilities, their large salaries or the hero worship they so often receive, and I don’t mean the owners lack pride in their financial empires, their country-club memberships, or their massive stadiums.

What I am talking about is a total lack of pride on the part of the fans. It is incomprehensible that any self-respecting person would continue to support these clowns after you have been shown time and again that neither the owners nor players give a damn about the fans.

If a strike happens and the fans return afterward, you should all hang your heads in shame.

Jerry Parsons

Long Beach

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As a lifelong Kansas City Royal fan, I sit here and ask myself-- how, in the name of God, will I survive if the players strike?

Gary Durrett

Glendale

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For quite a few years now, the conventional wisdom, correct or not, has been that baseball players are overpaid.

The players have implicitly endorsed this view by regularly claiming that it’s not their fault--if the owners are willing to pay these exorbitant salaries, why shouldn’t they take them?

Now, in a display of unity unmatched since losing their infamous reserve clause, the owners say they are no longer willing. This has not deterred the players, however, who resist any meaningful restraints on the annual escalation of their salaries.

The owners claim that a majority of teams is losing money and, moreover, that their proposals are aimed primarily at bringing about competitive balance.

Unfortunately for them, most people, the players included, assume that the figures bandied about by the owners are as reliable as those of their brethren in corporate America.

What everyone needs is an honest, independent audit. With verified numbers, no matter what they showed, the owners would still be on solid ground in pushing their luxury-tax and revenue-sharing proposals because competitive balance is needed to sustain baseball. The players would have the opportunity to mount a defensible position in contesting the lines where these numbers should fall as they would affect salaries. A reasonable middle ground would probably be available because neither party would be able to blithely accuse the other of being driven solely by greed.

One thing is certain: A strike would be as bad for baseball as would the Yankees’ signing of free agent Vladimir Guerrero at season’s end.

Bart Robertson

Torrance

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I wish the owners would, for once, develop a spine and stand up to Donald Fehr and the players. The owners should let the players strike and then declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This would cancel all player contracts and allow the owners to put in a more balanced and sane economic structure.

Most of us true baseball fans these days are loyal to the game and the team. Players come and go. There are enough minor league, college, and international players to fill the major league rosters. Eventually, when the current major league players realize that the game is larger than they are and not vice versa, they will come back.

Cameron Sun

Manhattan Beach