I had already bought the lemon-poppy muffins, and I had four newspapers in hand, looking forward to reading them on a waterfront deck rather than at my desk. But when I plopped the papers down on the counter in the convenience store, the kid behind the cash register went off like some Dennis Miller wannabe.
Now, I didn’t have the newspaper open to the sports page yet. And I wasn’t wearing my HI, MY NAME IS MARK AND I’M A SPORTSWRITER badge. Yet this teenager–16, 17 years old at the most–started trashing Major League baseball players with all the impassioned excitement of XXX contemplating an avalanche. “These guys are morons,” he insisted. “Somebody ought to set them straight. Make them do a real job for once in their life.” And mind you, this was the morning after the players chose not to name a strike date. I blathered some Yogiism like “It’s not over till it’s over” and skedaddled.
More than 30 years ago, when Curt Flood defied baseball owners and declared himself a free agent, he was unmistakably a hero to me and my baseball-loving friends. The civil-rights era was still an urgent memory and Flood’s carefully chosen use of the word “slavery” resonated deeply with us. Through too many strikes and lockouts, we remained resolutely on the players’ side. After all, we were working men, too. But by the ‘94 strike, about the best any of us–now middle-aged and distressed that our children would never love this game in quite the same way as we did–could muster was “a pox on both your houses.” And this time around when it comes to choosing sides, it appears most everyone has landed–unhappily, reluctantly, but indubitably–on the owners’ side.
Even the players (average salary $2.35 million) must have noticed because for the first time they seem acutely conscious of all the public relations surrounding the labor strife. The decision not to name a strike date, though ultimately (and perhaps as early as tomorrow) meaningless, reflected a new awareness of the fans’ antipathy. And there is plenty of evidence that September 11th sensibilities are also playing a huge role. Baseball was so conspicuously part of the healing process that its absence on this very sober first anniversary could certainly appear a calculated offense.
The players’ PR concerns are significant enough that they have even relented on what fans long ago recognized as a no-brainer: drug testing for steroids. Steroids and their ilk have cast a giant pall on the game. No sport revels in its history and its records like baseball, and those are being rendered as meaningless as those of your weekly bowling league. McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, all the would-be baseball legends, are now eyed with equal parts admiration and suspicion. Maybe not even quite equal.
Drug testing was such a departure for the baseball union that fans might not have noticed, at least not yet, that every other sport would find this toothless proposal laughable. Spend two years testing, with absolutely no repercussions, just to determine whether steroids is a real problem or just baseball’s Loch Ness Monster. If real, then maybe come 2005, the season when Barry Bonds figures to hit 90 home runs, you implement a policing program. Hey, I’ll save everyone a lot of time and money and stipulate that it’s both real and a huge problem.
I’ll also stipulate to the fact that competitive imbalance is truly a destructive force. How long can we expect the perennial losers–the Milwaukees, Pittsburghs, K.C.s and Tampa Bays–to sustain a fan base when the standings are virtually preordained by money? The NFL, America’s true pastime, is a marvelous crapshoot where every team begins the season with genuine hope. Its playoffs are a revolving door; everyone has a shot except the Bengals. Baseball doesn’t offer any hope to the downtrodden. And without hope, indifference is ultimately assured. Major League Baseball’s 2002 playoffs, if they are played, could be a virtual carbon copy of last season’s.
With one notable exception, of course. The banner year for the noncontracted Minnesota Twins is convenient for the advocates of business as usual, namely the players’ union and its strangest bedfellow, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. But Bud Selig is right. (It pains me to write that, but even a blind squirrel …) The Twins are indeed an “aberration.” And if baseball just proceeds along its merry way, that will become readily apparent. Several of the key Twins are arbitration-eligible next year, the beginning of a chain reaction that would eventually dismantle the team. And right about the time Bernie Williams was losing a step in center field, King George would be opening up his coffers for his successor. Would anyone be surprised when Minnesota’s Torii Hunter signed on in the Bronx?
The players are certainly right to be suspicious of this new breed of owners, who may be nothing other than slicker than their predecessors. And also of their books, always unrevealed, that purportedly bleed red, while every guy with a spare $10 million in his pocket lines up to try and buy himself a team. But none of that really matters when you’ve completely lost the fans. That’s a losing hand. The only choice is whether to lose a little now or maybe a whole lot more later. Union chief Donald Fehr is as smart as they come, but a long undefeated streak can cloud your judgment. As the gambler says, there’s a time to hold them and a time to fold them.
September 11 avails the players an opportunity to cloak that fold in a noble desire not to inflict pain at a particularly sensitive time for what remains a wounded nation. There are greater concerns than their pocketbooks, or at least they can say that. They can do it for all the fans. For the good of the great game. For America. Just cue up “God Bless America” like it’s the seventh-inning stretch. Then ballplayers just might find themselves mentioned once again in the same breath with cops and firemen rather than CEOs.
