IT’S BEEN 14 long, hard months for Randy Levine, who is standing in the ballroom of Chicago’s Hyatt Regency O’Hare on November 6 with the owners of baseball’s 30 teams, all of them about to engage in an exercise in futility. Levine’s done what he was hired to do—negotiate a deal with the union and begin the healing process between the owners and their players—only to see his friend and his boss Bud Selig throw him under the bus.
Levine is disappointed he can’t stop the owners from doing what they always do: misread the union. Turn down this deal, Fehr will panic, and we’ll get a much better deal, hard-liners like Jerry Reinsdorf keep insisting. Selig agreed, withdrew his support for an agreement he seemed ready to approve, and effectively killed the deal the owners will be voting on in just a few minutes.
This is going to end one of two ways, Levine thinks as he listens to Selig open the meeting. Either the owners suddenly change course and accept this deal and continue on the road to recovery—one that was jump-started this season with the Yankees championship and the surplus of power hitters—or they will stand firm and reject the deal, see their game crash and burn once more, then start the process all over again next year.
And they’d be starting over with a new negotiator. There’s no way Levine is doing this again, even if the owners beg him to return. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani wants to make him a deputy mayor, and Levine can’t get back to the Giuliani administration fast enough.
It’s time for Levine to state his case, and though today’s outcome is predetermined, the curly-haired, 41-year-old lawyer is not ready to fall on his sword—despite rumors that he is quitting or about to be fired. Why should he leave with a stain on his résumé? Instead he gives it one last try, explaining that this deal gives the small market teams the revenue sharing they need. And there’s a tax leveled on the game’s five biggest spenders to rein in salaries.
The union signed off on interleague play, which will start next season, and the players are kicking about $150 million of their own money into the owners’ revenue sharing pool in each of the next two years.
“Is this deal everything you wanted? No, but it gives you what you need,” Levine says. “It breaks new ground, and you can come back and make adjustments in your next negotiation.”
Levine runs through the terms and numbers on the deal sheets sitting in front of every owner, but he can see most of these men have already tuned him out. He asks for questions, gets a few, and when the last question is answered, Levine says he has one more thing he wants them to consider.
“If you do not approve this deal, there is no way the union will bargain with you again,” Levine warns them. “We are no longer at impasse. We will keep living under the old agreement you all hate, and there is a very good chance we will be hit with another unfair labor practice complaint. It will be World War III.”
A dour-looking Selig thanks Levine. The Acting Commissioner polled every owner the night before, so he knows what will happen next. Still, he asks Levine to leave the room so he can take a roll call vote. Levine nods, collects his papers, and walks out to the hallway, where he’ll spend an hour waiting for the owners to make their next mistake.
Levine is used to waiting. It’s about all he’s done since the weekend of August 9, when he and his assistant Rob Manfred spent three very long days and nights banging out an agreement with the union. The two sides found common ground on revenue sharing, and Fehr finally said yes to a luxury tax—the first time the union agreed to any form of payroll restraint since free agency changed everything in 1976. By the early morning hours of Saturday, Levine had reason to believe a deal was finally within reach.
Why not? Levine had stopped negotiations almost hourly so he and Manfred could call Selig with updates. At each step they heard nothing but encouragement. After only bad news for more than a year, Fehr was cautiously optimistic when he spoke with reporters that Saturday in a break from the marathon sessions. “It’s certainly true that the differences have been substantially narrowed,” Fehr said that day. “We’re encouraged.”
Selig’s support was vital for Levine, who is no stranger to the owners or the union. He’d dealt with both sides during his time as Steinbrenner’s outside counsel. He’d done a little private work for Selig and Reinsdorf, too. Levine’s wife Mindy grew up with Selig’s eldest daughter Sari, and the two remain close to this day. His mother-in-law is close to Sue Selig, and Mindy’s father is Bud’s internist as well as the Brewers’ team doctor.
“When Randy tells you something, he’s speaking for me,” Selig told Fehr on more than one occasion. By the time Levine and Fehr called it quits early Saturday evening, August 10, the two men were confident they had a groundbreaking agreement. Things were looking so good that the Phillies’ Dave Montgomery, a well-respected member of the bargaining team, called Levine early that Sunday morning to wish him luck. “We hear you’re close to a deal,” Montgomery told him. “That’s great. Everyone is excited.”
But not for long. After telling Levine to “keep going” all Sunday morning, Selig suddenly reversed course. Early that afternoon the Acting Commissioner called his chief negotiator and shut down the talks. Again. “Bud, we’re on the one-yard line here,” Levine told Selig. “This is a great deal.”
Selig didn’t budge. “I’m not ready to support this deal,” Selig said. “It’s not good enough.”
Fehr was incredulous when Levine gave him the news. “Fuck you, Randy,” the union leader told him. “We have a deal. We’re not going to give you a thing.”
What changed for Selig? There’s little doubt Reinsdorf wanted more, and for the White Sox owner, it wasn’t just money. Reinsdorf wanted Fehr brought to his knees, and this deal didn’t come close to doing that. Instead Fehr has never appeared stronger. No one gets into Selig’s head better than Reinsdorf, who doesn’t tell his close friend what to do, as the media often suggests—he just knows the right buttons to push.
“We spilled all this blood and this is the deal we are getting?” would be enough to get Selig thinking. “You’re getting fucked by the union” would be enough to start Selig second-guessing himself. And Reinsdorf had plenty of support. It was clear once news of a deal spread that Selig was getting pushback from his friends Carl Pohlad, David Glass, and all the other hard-liners.
Whatever his reasons, Selig pulled the plug on any meaningful talks for the next six long weeks. On September 24, Fehr reached out and told Selig he was sending out a deal memo for his members to ratify based on his agreement with Levine. He had no choice, he told Selig, the season was almost over, and the players were soon to scatter.
A few days later the two men and Levine met for lunch in Milwaukee, and Selig told Fehr he needed to make four changes in the deal. Fehr calmly told him the time for doing that had come and gone. He wasn’t quite as civil when the two men met at Levine’s office on October 21, hours before Game 2 of the World Series. And for good reason: Selig told him he had changed his mind again. The deal was off.
“You told me Randy had the authority to make a deal, and now you’re undermining him,” Fehr shouted at Selig. “We might just pull this whole deal off the table!”
But that was merely a warm-up for their confrontation during Game 6 at Yankee Stadium on October 26. Fehr had made a few minor concessions to reach another agreement and had shaken hands with Levine in Atlanta two days earlier. Frustrated that Selig refused to publicly acknowledge their new deal, Fehr told reporters on the field during batting practice that negotiations were over and an agreement was at hand.
“Bud just has to decide if he wants it,” Fehr told them.
An hour later, Selig gave reporters a different story. “I regard the negotiations as ongoing,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything more than that.”
When Levine pulled the two men together during the game in an office outside Steinbrenner’s suite, Fehr confronted Selig. “What the fuck are you doing?” Fehr thundered. “You’re wasting my time! You don’t want to do a deal. I am prepared to stay where we are. I will fight you in court. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Then he turned to Levine. “How can I trust you, Randy?” Fehr shouted. “You should fucking quit. How can you work for these people?”
When Selig could take no more, he shot back. “Don’t fucking talk to me that way,” Selig yelled. “There is no deal. I’m going to try to get there, but we have issues.”
“You have issues?” Fehr shouted, the veins in his neck beginning to bulge. “We agreed to a fucking deal in Atlanta! What are you trying to do?”
The two men were still yelling at each other when a door to Steinbrenner’s suite opened and out charged the Boss. “What the hell is going on in here?” said Steinbrenner, his anger rising with each word. “I have 30 guests in there, and you are disturbing them. Shut the fuck up!”
Steinbrenner looked over at Selig, who was clearly shaken. “Are you all right?” he asked Bud. “Look, just take this out of here.”
Steinbrenner returned to his party, but Fehr was still not finished. “How is this going to end?” he asked Selig. “I can’t trust Randy anymore. You are the only one I am going to sit down with. You are the Commissioner. There is nobody else I can make a deal with.”
Selig ignored Fehr’s final barrage as the two men walked away and said nothing to reporters who had gotten wind of the meeting. When the media turned to Levine, he gamely tried to convince everyone that things were still on track. But nothing was further from the truth, and everyone knew it. Another fiery meeting after the game did nothing to improve the situation.
Selig then took four days before calling today’s vote, giving opponents ample time to lobby against the agreement and the two men who crafted it.
One particularly mean-spirited attack in the Chicago Tribune told Levine exactly where his deal stood. “What we should do is put Randy against the wall, blindfold him, and shoot him for treason,” one anonymous NL owner said. “Randy wants to make any deal,” another unnamed owner told the Tribune, “so he can be the hero.”
And an unnamed member of the Executive Council made it personal, dragging Selig and Levine’s family ties into the story. “What Randy has done is horrendous,” the owner, widely believed to be Reinsdorf, told the Tribune. “Bud is bleeding and very hurt, but there isn’t much he can do.”
Selig announced he had no intention of firing his negotiator, but his silence on the merits of Levine’s proposal was all that really mattered. Publicly, Selig declined to comment on the deal, insisting he did not want to influence anyone’s vote. Privately, he made it clear that this was not the deal he wanted.
And that is what he is telling the game’s owners today as soon as Levine walks out of the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency. “We should reject this deal and go back to the union and get what we need,” Selig tells them. “We have not waited this long to accept an agreement like this.”
The roll call vote is 16–14 in favor of the deal, far short of the 23 votes needed to pass. Seeking leverage for the next round of talks, Selig urges more owners to reject the proposal. Two votes later, it’s 18–12 against the deal, with the Reds, A’s, Orioles, and Cardinals doing what Selig asked.
Next, Selig tells Bob DuPuy, his personal lawyer who doubles as the outside counsel for the Executive Council, to form a committee with Baltimore’s Peter Angelos. Their task: do a risk/reward analysis of each provision in Levine’s proposal, and lay out the risks of making no deal at all.
“We look forward to expeditiously getting together with the union and bring closure to a labor agreement,” Selig tells reporters at the end of the seven-hour meeting, “an agreement that will bring long-term peace and labor harmony to the game.”
Levine is on his way to O’Hare Airport after his stinging defeat when Fehr reaches him on his cell phone. “You thought you were different, but I fucking told you this is what would happen,” Fehr says. “You should quit now. There is no way we are going to change anything in that deal.”
Especially not the changes the owners are demanding. Fehr and Levine agreed to limit the number of teams paying the luxury tax to five and for the tax to be in place for three of the five years of the deal. The owners want no limit on teams hit by the tax, plus a fourth taxed season.
Both changes are nonstarters, Fehr tells Levine, and that’s the message he’s ready to deliver when Selig leads a small contingent of owners and lawyers to the union’s office the afternoon of November 11. The two sides meet in the union’s conference room, where a painting of Marvin Miller stares down at Selig, John Harrington, Fred Wilpon, Claude Brochu, Levine, Rob Manfred, and Bob DuPuy as they takes seats at the long conference table. Sitting opposite them are the union’s Gene Orza, Lauren Rich, Michael Weiner, Tom Glavine, David Cone, and B. J. Surhoff.
When everyone is settled, Fehr begins. “This is a sad day for the players, for the union staff, and for baseball,” he says. “I would like to describe the events that brought us here today.”
And with that, Fehr launches into a 45-minute lecture about how Selig lied to him, misled the players, and undermined the entire negotiation process. They all sit in uncomfortable silence as Fehr tells them how he begged Selig to keep negotiating after Dick Ravitch was fired. How he begged Selig to keep bargaining after the NLRB announced it would seek an injunction. And how he begged yet again after Judge Sotomayor’s ruling.
Each plea was treated the same way.
“I never heard back from you,” says Fehr, looking directly at Selig. “You said you would resume negotiations in the fall when you hired a new negotiator who would have full authority to make a deal. Randy entered as your negotiator in November, and you told me to trust Randy as if he were you.”
So we did, Fehr said, and after a series of negotiations we reached an agreement. “But you were not willing to endorse the deal,” Fehr tells Selig. He rattles off one meeting after another, all about getting a deal, all ending with Selig’s refusal to act.
“A clear signal that you did not want a deal,” Fehr says.
Fehr talks about reaching another deal with Levine in Atlanta, about their bitter confrontation at Yankee Stadium, about the deal the owners voted down five days ago in Chicago. “You broke your promises,” Fehr says to Selig. “You never intended to make a deal.”
Why? Fehr says he can only guess.
“Perhaps it’s the only way you can remain Commissioner and keep your salary,” he says.
“Perhaps it’s because you have your new stadium.”
“Perhaps you just cannot handle it.”
Selig has no reply, nor does any of his team, and the room goes dead silent. “Let’s take a short break,” Fehr finally says. Fifteen minutes later, everyone gathers around the conference table again. Fehr makes it clear the union will never grant the owners their two big demands, that all he’s willing to do is tinker around the edges. And with the day’s newspapers thick with rumors that Levine plans to resign at the stroke of midnight tonight, Fehr ends the meeting with one last question.
“Bud,” says Fehr. “Who is your negotiator now?”
After an uncomfortable silence, a sheepish Selig says, “I guess I am.”
It’s clear to all but the most passionate hawks that Fehr and the union aren’t going to move. And in the days following the meeting at union headquarters, Mets owner Fred Wilpon bangs away at Selig to make a deal. Paul Beeston pleads with him to do the same. Selig is hearing from Steinbrenner almost every day, too. Enough of this nonsense, they tell him: just make the damn deal.
About the only reprieve Selig had came on November 9, when 15,000 Brewers fans braved a raw, windy day to celebrate the formal groundbreaking for Miller Park. Hank Aaron and Robin Yount were there to thrust shovels into the ground in the center-field parking lot, where Bud’s new $250 million money-making machine is scheduled to open in 2000.
Maybe they’ll have a labor agreement by then.
DuPuy and his group finish their risk/reward analysis, and it’s not pretty. Baseball’s bankers are worried about getting repaid if there’s another work stoppage, and they’re talking about jacking up their once-favorable rates. The TV networks are unhappy, and a host of sponsors are holding back almost a billion dollars in deals until a labor agreement is signed. Interleague play will remain on hold—a new revenue source lost. Small market teams in need of revenue sharing, like Bud’s Brewers, will sink deeper into the red.
As Thanksgiving approaches, Selig realizes it’s time to take Fehr’s deal. He just can’t go another season without some form of increased revenue sharing, and Fehr is more than willing to play under the current agreement, which favors the players. So Bud starts calling the hawks, working hard to talk them off the front line. This war has to end, he tells them; there’s too much at stake. He gets the biggest pushback from Reinsdorf, who still isn’t ready to stand down. But this is one time the White Sox owner can’t find the right button to push.
The tipping point comes on November 20. Levine is in his office at MLB headquarters when a clerk pops in and tells him Reinsdorf just signed Albert Belle. All contracts are filed with MLB before they’re announced, and this one, the clerk tells Levine, is the richest in baseball history: $10 million a season for five years, with a $5 million signing bonus. Yes, the same Albert Belle who’s been suspended five times in eight seasons for actions such as throwing baseballs at fans and verbally abusing a female TV reporter during the ’95 World Series.
The kicker: Reinsdorf added a clause ensuring the hard-hitting Belle will remain one of the three highest-paid players for the life of his contract.
The owner who’s railed the loudest and longest about curbing player salaries has just broken the bank. Levine rushes into the hall, where he sees Manfred, who’s just heard to same news. “What the fuck?” says Levine, and both men run back into Levine’s office to call Selig.
“Bud, have you heard the news?” Levine asks. Selig has not. Levine fills him in, and there is silence on the other end of the line. “Thank you,” Selig says.
Selig is soon on a conference call with the game’s owners, and one thing quickly becomes clear: Reinsdorf’s stunning decision has broken any remaining resistance to the deal they’d just rejected. Another vote will be held in Chicago in six days. But first, Selig wants to talk to Reinsdorf, who has spent the day telling reporters that he’s just trying to win.
“It doesn’t mean I like the system,” he tells every reporter who reaches him.
And that’s what he tells Selig when the two speak later that day. “But Jerry, all you’ve done is preach about getting spending under control,” says Selig, who knows there is little reason to discuss this much further. What’s done is done, and Reinsdorf has done what every owner in baseball always does: whatever’s best for his team.
Reinsdorf has one request for Selig. “Please don’t work the owners,” he asks. “Let’s get to Chicago and have an honest discussion.” But it’s not long after Reinsdorf walks into the O’Hare Hilton ballroom on November 26 that he realizes Selig has the votes he needs to approve the deal. “I can’t believe he fucked me,” Reinsdorf mutters, and he’s still muttering when the roll call reaches him. “No,” he says, but only Cleveland, Kansas City, and Oakland join him, and the deal is approved, 26–4.
“It gives me great personal pleasure that baseball fans can finally look forward to five years of uninterrupted play,” Selig tells the media. “We can now work together to bring peace to the game and reconnect our sport to all of our fans.”
Fehr issues a statement soon after he receives Selig’s concession speech. “While we are pleased with the owners’ action today, the successful conclusion of this negotiating process represents only the very first step in the rebuilding process,” it reads in part. “Much work remains to be done.”
For once, Fehr and Selig are in agreement. Their deal is a work in progress: the luxury tax will start next season and end two seasons later. Revenue sharing will begin retroactively with the ’96 season but will be phased in over the life of the contract: $42 million in local revenue is expected to be sent from the top 12 teams to the bottom 14 in each of the first two years—the Marlins and Rockies will be exempt from revenue sharing until 1998—and the amount will increase to $70 million in 2000. The players will be taxed 2.5 percent of their salaries for the next two seasons to help fund revenue sharing.
The subject of random testing for steroids, briefly discussed in 1994, never made it back to the bargaining table and is another subject to review for the next contract. Owners can still test their players if they have reasonable cause, but no one was tested this past season, even though some middle infielders looked like middle linebackers and home run records fell by the bushel. That option figures to remain on the shelf.
Besides, neither side is too concerned about the level of steroid use in the game. These things tend to run their course. As long as steroid use doesn’t get out of hand, the drug will take its place beside amphetamines as an accepted part of baseball, something to help players make it through a long season, recover from injuries, and maybe add a year or two to their careers.
The labor agreement covers five years, with a players’ option for a sixth, and both sides will watch carefully to determine how each provision will change the game. Especially the team in the Bronx. Steinbrenner soon learns he’ll have to shell out $5.8 million in revenue sharing for this season. George has already turned up the heat on his business execs to find big deals that will maximize the Yankees brand and make up for lost revenue.
But cut back on spending? Not likely, especially with players like Roger Clemens hitting the open market. Steinbrenner is already planning his trip out to Houston to personally deliver a big offer to the star pitcher.
Fehr meets with the players over the next few months to explain what the new deal means to them, and it’s something different for each group. The minimum salary will more than triple, to $190,000, by ’98, and it’s important for veterans to understand that the more young players are paid, the better chance older and well-paid players will have to keep their jobs. Make the minimum too low and owners will stock the end of their bench with younger players every time.
“You’re all connected,” says Fehr, who reminds players that their determination to remain united when Selig and the owners shut down the game was the major reason management didn’t get the salary cap it so desperately wanted.
Fehr also tells his players how important it is that baseball find an independent Commissioner, though he knows Selig won’t be leaving the job any time soon. The owners don’t even have a search committee, much less a search under way. Selig continues to say he doesn’t want the job, but the office is his to keep, and there’s no way he’s walking away now. The revenue sharing deal he just accepted will hand the Brewers $4.6 million for this past season and an estimated $30 million–plus over the life of the contract, but that’s a fraction of what Selig wanted—and still wants.
That’s just one reason this labor war was a huge victory for Fehr and the union—and why it’s never been more accurate to call the labor leader the most powerful man in baseball. The owners never got their salary cap or any changes to free agency or salary arbitration. Fehr’s credibility among the players has never been higher.
No, Selig won’t be stepping down as Commissioner.
Not when he still has so much work left to do.