Anniversary of baseball strike gives cause to think

By By Will Bardwell / staff writer
August 12, 2004
Today is the 10-year anniversary of one of the worst days of my life.
On Aug. 12, 1994, the Major League Baseball Players Union followed through on its threat to strike after failing to reach agreements with owners on several economic issues.
I was barely a teenager at the time, and I remember staying up late on Aug. 11 to watch the end of the last baseball game played before the strike an 8-1 Seattle Mariners win over the Oakland Athletics. It was the last time anyone saw a Major League Baseball game for eight months.
Of course, none of us knew the strike would last that long. Every night, ESPN had someone on 'SportsCenter' who had a new reason we should all expect a baseball game later that week.
I didn't care about a salary cap, revenue sharing or antitrust exemptions. I was just a kid who wanted to watch baseball. So when players and owners told fans that they hoped for a quick agreement, I gobbled it up.
As it turned out, neither of them wanted a quick agreement. Each side wanted only to mess over the other side. But by the end of the strike, if you look at the agreement reached, neither side gained very much at all. The only ones who got messed over were the fans.
And people haven't forgotten. To this day, some fans who used to regularly follow baseball turn a cold shoulder to the game.
In the decade since the strike, my stepfather has watched only one MLB game Cal Ripken's 2,131st consecutive game in 1995. When the Atlanta Braves won the World Series that season, he didn't watch a second of it. When Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa gave us one of the most memorable summers in sports history in 1998, he didn't care. When the Arizona Diamondbacks squeaked past the New York Yankees in 2001 to finish one of the greatest World Series ever, he was probably watching Lou Dobbs or David Letterman anything but baseball.
He never really loved the game, but before the strike, he enjoyed following it and watching it. Now he hates it. He hates the owners and he hates the players. I can't blame him.
He swears he'll never watch another Major League Baseball game, and he thinks anyone who forgave and forgot the strike is a fool.
And I know he's right, even though I've gone to dozens of MLB games since the strike.
For me, it was always about the game, and I know it's the same for millions of other fans. We didn't care about the politics of the league's economic negotiations. We just wanted to watch baseball, because baseball was the most important thing to us.
But it wasn't the most important thing to players and owners. Money was far more important. So, for almost a year, they held the game hostage, and we were the ones caught in the crossfire.
Along the way, they killed the '94 World Series. For the first October in nearly a century, there was no World Series. Even Adolf Hitler and a world at war couldn't pull that off. But a room full of greedy old men and ballplayers did it easily.
Ironically, I first learned about the possibility of a strike while doing what I loved more than anything watching baseball. In June 1994, I was at a Braves game at Fulton County Stadium, where the Braves were hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers. One of the reasons I remember the game was that Terry Pendleton, the Braves' hefty third baseman, stole second base in the second inning.
The other reason I remember that game is that my cousin and I were sitting in front of Brett Butler's wife. Butler was the Dodgers' center fielder at the time, but his family lived in Atlanta. And during the game, I remember overhearing Mrs. Butler talk to someone about how owners wanted to be able to terminate a player's contract, as she said, "for no reason."
Even back in 1994, players had guaranteed money in their contracts, so I'm not sure why that was her big concern. I don't recall her saying anything about a salary cap or revenue sharing, but I specifically remember her saying that the players "might have to go on strike."
Go on strike? From what? Playing baseball?
It sounded as ridiculous to me then as it does now.
Ten years later, the collective greed of players and owners and their decision to make money their lone priority still haunts baseball. With the exception of teams like the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees, who enjoy cult-like followings, attendance is still much lower than it was before the strike.
Take, for example, my favorite team, the Braves. They've won 12 straight division titles and boast at least two future Hall of Famers in Chipper Jones and John Smoltz maybe a third, if Andruw Jones can stay healthy. And they play in one of the largest cities in the nation. Tickets to a Braves game ought to be ridiculously hard to come by.
Look around the stadium the next time you see the Braves on TV, though. On most nights, Turner Field is half full at best.
If you're a baseball fan, like me, that's great if you're trying to buy tickets. It's also more than a little sad.
But it's not sad because so many people didn't forgive Major League Baseball. It's sad because I know I'm one of the fools who did.