IT’S MIDAFTERNOON, AND, like clockwork, Bud Selig walks through the owner’s gate at County Stadium. He’s just completed his usual lunchtime routine: the 2.4-mile drive up to Gilles Frozen Custard stand for his regular hot dog with sauerkraut and a Diet Coke, back to his Lexus to eat while reading the local sports section, the short drive to Selig Leasing Company to say hello to his oldest daughter Sari, who manages the family car leasing business.
Then back to County Stadium.
“Hello, Lori,” Selig grunts as he walks past secretary Lori Keck and into his cluttered office. It’s June 14, and though the Tigers are in town to begin a three-game series, tonight’s game is barely on his radar. The biggest game of Selig’s career is beginning 700 miles away in New York, where Dick Ravitch is delivering the owners’ contract offer to Don Fehr. Twenty-one months after replacing Fay Vincent, Selig is taking his first real shot at reshaping the economic landscape of Major League Baseball.
The final piece of Selig’s plan fell into place last week when he nailed down the structure for the salary cap at the owners’ quarterly meeting in Cincinnati. By the time the owners and baseball execs finished riding the elephants shipped in by Reds owner Marge Schott for their annual summer party, most agreed that Bud had done the impossible—he’d united all 28 owners. In the last six months, Selig got them to agree on revenue sharing, a salary cap, and a measure requiring 75 percent approval for any labor deal.
And now he is sitting in his office, waiting to hear Fehr’s response to his contract offer. Selig thinks the deal is a good one: a seven-year contract, with the players getting 50 percent of the game’s revenues—a lot more than many of his hard-line allies wanted to offer. That translates to $1 billion a season, a sum that will increase as revenues grow. And when was the last time revenues haven’t grown?
We want this to be a partnership with the players, Selig instructed Ravitch to tell Fehr. And this is a partnership that should make Fehr happy.
But Selig knows it won’t. Reinsdorf always says that Fehr is driven only by the specter of Marvin Miller and a psychopathic hatred of baseball owners. Both Selig and Reinsdorf think Fehr is a danger to the game—and either the union leader will be beaten this time around or he’ll wind up putting many of them out of business.
Selig isn’t about to let the latter happen, especially in Milwaukee, where he currently has his hands full. Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist has used baseball’s shaky labor situation to push harder for any new stadium to be built downtown. It was hard to argue with Selig over the location of a new stadium when everyone believed he was going to pay for most of it. But if Selig insists he needs revenue sharing and a salary cap just to survive, how can he keep his promise to build a stadium with money of his own? And if the taxpayers will be paying most—if not all—of the bill, Norquist thinks it’s only right that they have a say where the stadium is built.
Selig is also annoyed with Milwaukee Magazine writer Bruce Murphy, who recently wrote that the Brewers were $50 million in debt. “Absurd,” Selig told the Milwaukee Journal. Murphy implied that a significant portion of the losses came as the Brewers bought back stock from many of Selig’s original partners, purchases that gave Bud control of the franchise and boosted his share in the team from 2 to 16 percent. Selig called the higher figure nonsense but did not dispute that he’s the largest shareholder. Nor that he’s the man in charge.
But what good is having controlling interest when your hands are tied? The average player’s salary has gone from $512,000 to $1.19 million in the past five years, a change Selig says makes it all but impossible for small market teams like his to survive. Bud won’t open his books like Baltimore’s Peter Angelos recently did, but he insists he’s lost millions the past three years.
By mid-May, the low-budget Brewers had already suffered a franchise-record 14-game losing streak and enter tonight’s game last in the new AL Central division at 27–34. Only one regular is hitting .300, and the pitching staff is in shambles.
But while Milwaukee’s season is heading in the wrong direction, the rest of baseball is bursting with great stories. Ken Griffey Jr. (26 home runs), Matt Williams (23), and Frank Thomas (22) are all mounting challenges to Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. Thomas is a triple crown threat, batting .368 with 52 RBI, while his team goes toe-to-toe with Cleveland and star outfielder Albert Belle (16–49–.356) for the AL Central title.
Second-year catcher Mike Piazza (13–56–.342), the Dodgers’ former 62nd-round draft pick, is headed back to the All-Star Game. Molitor, who’ll turn 38 in August, is hitting .342, and Tony Gwynn (.386) looks primed to make his second run at .400. In Montreal, 22-year-old sensation Pedro Martinez (5–3, 86 strikeouts in 80 innings) is keeping the small market Expos just two games behind Greg Maddux (10–2, 1.38 ERA) and the Braves.
Paul O’Neill’s superlative hitting (12–42–.417) and Jimmy Key’s pitching (9–1, 3.14) have pushed the Yankees into first place, and the AL’s best team is once again baseball’s biggest draw.
Historic is one of Selig’s favorite adjectives, one he uses a bit too often, but no one understands the value of a run on Maris’ record or a .400 season—or a winning team in the Bronx—better than the Acting Commissioner. His sport is built on history, and this season is shaping up to be one for the ages. Is he really prepared to give it all up to get what he wants at the bargaining table?
The truth is, no matter how often he tells his fellow owners—and himself—that the players are making too much money to mount a long strike, Selig knows Fehr will attempt to take the players out if the owners don’t drop their salary cap demand. That message was delivered once again by Paul Molitor. “If they’re banking everything on a salary cap, then I don’t think we’ll see 1994 having a World Champion,” Molitor told Selig’s hometown paper. “The only optimism I can find is they’ve always shown they can make a deal in the 11th hour.”
Selig can only shake his head. Baseball needs the changes he’s proposed. Yes, the cap eliminates salary arbitration. But this deal gives players free agency after four years instead of six, though teams will have the right of first refusal for those two years. Yes, the deal requires the union to put half their licensing money into the revenue sharing pool—the very money it uses for its strike fund—but Fehr is always talking about partnership. How can they be partners when everything isn’t shared?
Fehr will disagree, Selig is sure of that. So the real question is not if but when the players will strike. Selig is determined to keep the owners from folding this time, and passing the 75 percent rule all but ensures he’ll succeed. Losing this season will be a high price to pay—a very high price—but if that’s what it takes to change the game’s economic system, so be it. How else can teams like the Brewers survive?
Selig takes a small bit of solace knowing the blame for all this will fall on Fehr. He’s the one who’ll be turning down $1 billion—or more—while taking the players out on strike. And if the fallout breaks Fehr’s hold on the players, what could be better? Yes, losing a season would be awful, but this time the reward would be worth the price.
It’s late afternoon when reporters begin to call Selig, relaying the union’s response to the contract offer and asking for the Acting Commissioner’s reaction. “They eliminate salary arbitration, add a cap, and pose all kinds of limitations on free agency,” Fehr told reporters. “Put those three things together, and you’ve cut the heart out of the player compensation system.”
Fehr’s lieutenants are even more pointed. From the union’s associate general counsel, Gene Orza: “How could the owners believe we could be happy? The revenue they’re sharing is the players’ revenue.” From assistant general counsel Lauren Rich: “If they thought we would be pleasantly surprised, there’s a real communication problem here.”
Selig listens thoughtfully, lets a few moments pass, then replies. “I think the clubs could have made a much more difficult and arbitrary proposal,” he says. “They didn’t, and believe me, there were some clubs that really had to strain to vote for this.”
Selig hangs up. He’s thrown down the gauntlet, and this time he’s confident the owners will hold firm.
Let’s see how Don Fehr deals with that.
Donald Martin Fehr lives to solve problems. That’s what makes him happy, and there isn’t a problem he doesn’t think he can figure out. On a recent All-Star tour through Japan, he sat down with a group of writers and laid out his plan to solve Tokyo’s suffocating traffic woes. No one was surprised. They know he reads almost 200 books a year, most of them scientific studies of how things work. Pull the puzzle apart, then put the pieces together again—problem solved. It’s the way his mind works.
Which is why he feels such a deep sense of futility on July 18, when he makes the short walk from union headquarters to the InterContinental Hotel in New York for another meeting with Dick Ravitch and his staff. A cloud has enveloped Fehr’s entire team for the past several months, a feeling of being pulled into a black hole with no way of breaking free. A problem without a solution.
It has been five weeks since the owners delivered the contract offer that threatens to stop this season dead in its tracks. This is not a battle over money; that would be easy. This is about competing philosophies.
The owners want to dramatically change the economic system, installing a salary cap that would give them control over costs.
The players want to maintain the status quo, preserving the free market for their services once they play six years in the majors.
Neither side is going to alter its position unless forced to do so.
Will the owners really cancel a season and a World Series? The union’s sources among management, agents, and baseball’s business partners say yes. The readiness to try the NFL’s 1987 strategy is especially strong among the seven small market teams, these sources say. And a few have singled out Reinsdorf as being almost eager to give it a try.
Given the steps the owners have taken—no independent Commissioner, hard-liners dominating the decision making, a supermajority required for any deal—it’s easy to see that baseball is rushing toward its eighth straight work stoppage.
Until that point is reached, any negotiating session is little more than theater, designed to preserve legal positions and influence public opinion. They’ve all been down this road before, and given the history—continued distrust and resentment on both sides over collusion and the $280 million it cost the owners—this battle promises to be especially long and ugly.
That’s pretty much what Fehr explained to the union’s Executive Board in Chicago on June 16, two days after Ravitch delivered ownership’s offer. The owners are talking about wanting a partnership with you, he told them, but that is little more than a smoke screen. “They’re trying to provoke you,” he said, advising them to be prepared for a worst-case scenario.
Then he handed the owners’ 27-page proposal to Lauren Rich. Search hard for any common ground, Fehr told her, no matter how small. Fehr has two goals: he wants to keep the players on the field, and he wants a counteroffer strong enough that any attempt by Selig to declare talks at an impasse and implement his new system would be rejected by the National Labor Relations Board. At that point, the owners would either return to the bargaining table or suffer stiff penalties.
Every union worries about implementation, especially since Ronald Reagan made busting unions acceptable when he replaced the striking air traffic controllers in the early ’80s. Unions have been trying to save jobs by offering concessions ever since. If Selig and the owners succeed in getting their terms, it would reverse almost all the rights players have gained in the past 20 years.
Rich, a veteran labor lawyer with a National Labor Relations Board background, spent the better part of a month poring over the report, consulting with economists and accountants, hoping to find something that might lead to a deal. On July 16, she gave Fehr a report that was sharp and to the point: This is nothing new, she wrote. It’s the same deal the owners have been trying to get for years. And once again, their reasoning makes little sense.
Rich tore apart their proposal point by point. Management claims the game lacks competitive balance, but only five teams—including the two expansion teams—have fallen short of the postseason in the last 15 years. In all, 19 teams have won a pennant and 12 have won the World Series.
The owners publicly claim 19 teams are losing money, but in truth the sport is doing well. Very well, says Rich, no matter how you look at it—and that’s according to the confidential numbers given to them by the owners themselves, numbers the union agreed to keep private. Baseball has turned a profit for eight straight years, clearing almost $800 million. Last season’s record $1.9 billion in revenues is 50 percent higher than just five seasons ago. Franchise values have never been higher and will continue to grow, given the twin booms in cable television and stadium construction.
Despite all this, Rich told Fehr, the owners are seeking huge concessions. The 50-50 split of revenues—down from the players’ current 55 percent share—and a salary cap would cost the players as much as $1.5 billion over the life of the seven-year deal. Selig is even asking players to hand over half their licensing money, a gift of at least $25 million a season.
And forget about a free market for players. There are now 15 teams at or near the proposed cap, she wrote, meaning more than half the clubs would not be able to bid on free agents. Granting free agency after four years increases the supply of players at the same time the cap is decreasing demand. You don’t have to be an economist to know this would be bad news for the players.
The question for teams won’t be “Will this player help me win?” she concluded. It will be “How much can I spend?” A salary cap won’t promote competitive balance. Or innovation. And management’s revenue sharing plan is so poorly constructed it will do little to grow the game’s profits.
Given all this, what’s in it for the owners?
“The clubs,” she wrote, “would have guaranteed profits.”
A black convertible pulls into the players’ parking lot on the west side of Yankee Stadium, and Don Mattingly pops out and walks over to the players’ entrance. He says hello to the guards, takes the stairs down to the clubhouse level, and makes his way to the home-team locker room. He’s made this walk for 12 years, but his pulse still quickens every time he enters the Yankees clubhouse. Walking into any major league clubhouse is special; walking into the clubhouse Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio called home is a walk into history.
It’s been a good season in the Bronx, a special season. Other Yankees teams over the past dozen seasons may have had more talent, but this one works hard and plays the game right. The Yankees have just returned from a West Coast road trip where they won 10 of 11, the last game a dramatic, come-from-behind victory over the Angels on a Mattingly three-run homer in the 9th. It’s July 28, and the Yankees are an AL-best 61–37. Mattingly’s first trip to the postseason is a lock.
The home run was Mattingly’s sixth of the season. He’s more of a singles and doubles hitter now, and after batting third every season since 1984, he’s given way to Paul O’Neill, now the team’s best hitter. “I would have made the switch a long time ago,” he told Buck Showalter eight days ago, when the Yankees manager told the first baseman he would be batting fifth.
The Captain hasn’t told anyone yet, but if the Yankees go all the way, this will be his last season. He’s now 33, he’s tired of working hard just to be an average player, and most of all, his three boys are growing up without him. Mattingly’s gone by mid-February and isn’t home again until October, so he’s missed the basketball and Little League games, the birthday parties and Fourth of July barbecues. He’s missed all the things he can never get back.
Mattingly has one more year left on his contract, a year worth $4 million, but he’s making $3.62 million this season and has always been careful with his finances. Money will not be an issue. His right wrist is throbbing and his back is sore; the fact is, his body never really stops hurting anymore.
He’s had a good career—a great career until injuries stole his bat speed—and if he finally gets to the World Series, he’s ready to call it quits. Would he feel different if he were still averaging 27 homers and 114 RBI while hitting .327—Hall of Fame stats—the way he did in his first six full seasons? Who knows?
But his plans could all change soon. Yesterday the owners formally rejected the union’s counterproposal for a new collective bargaining agreement. And at the very moment, Fehr is on a conference call with the union’s Executive Board, talking about when—not whether—to set a strike date. Given everything Mattingly knows, the players are ready to walk whenever the Board selects a date.
That’s why he has already reserved a house on Kentucky Lake in Tennessee. He’ll take the summer vacation with the kids he never gets to take. He’s not sure how long they’ll be out, but Mattingly doubts a strike will be short. He might as well start making up for lost time.
Mattingly walks to his locker—in the far corner, reserved for the team’s veteran stars—where columnist Ira Berkow of the New York Times is waiting. It’s 10:45 a.m., and Mattingly doesn’t feel like talking. It’s going to be a long day: last night’s game against the Red Sox was suspended with a score of 3–3 in the 8th thanks to a persistent rainstorm, and the two teams will finish that game before starting the one already scheduled for this afternoon.
But he agreed to the interview a while back, and this is an opportunity to send a message to fans who think the players are greedy and to any owners who doubt the players’ resolve. It’s also a chance to remind the younger players that others have sacrificed for them. So he sits down, changes out of his black polo shirt and jeans, pulls on the No. 23 Yankees jersey, and starts telling his story.
“What would playing in a World Series mean to you?” Berkow asks.
“I picture myself making the great play—diving for a ball, getting a big hit with men on base, wanting to know if I could take my game to another level,” Mattingly says. “Like Paul Molitor did in last year’s Series.
“But where I am now, and how I got here, is more important than me being in a World Series. I have to look at the big picture, not just at the small picture, which is me.”
He tells Berkow how the union does a good job teaching players about the game’s labor history and how players pass that knowledge along from generation to generation. Former Yankees star Goose Gossage told Mattingly he made $7,500 as a rookie in 1972; now the minimum salary is $109,000. Current Yankees reliever Steve Howe, a rookie with the Dodgers during the 50-day strike in 1981, told him the owners were crying poor then, just as they are now.
“Same story,” Mattingly says. “Same script.”
And, of course, there’s Curt Flood.
“I met Curt last year at a banquet in the offseason, and we talked about how he stood up to the owners to seek free agency,” Mattingly says. “He was blackballed, but he opened the door for Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith to sue baseball for free agency.”
The two men chat a bit more about the season. Mattingly is having a solid year, batting .295 with 18 doubles and 47 RBI to go with those six home runs. His fielding is once again flawless—there’s little doubt he’ll take home his ninth Gold Glove.
But the game isn’t about stats and awards, Mattingly says. It’s about wins and losses. It’s so much easier when you are winning. Every play is important. Every game is a big game.
And a strike could wipe that all away.
“I think I’m like most of the players,” Mattingly tells Berkow. “If it has to be, it has to be. We can’t wait to make our stand after the season. We’d have no leverage then.
“We have no choice but to act now.”
Mattingly knows he’s signed his last contract. The next labor agreement is for the game’s young players and for those who come after them. But Mattingly would never turn his back on them. And he knows the same is true for all the union veterans.
Mattingly is dressed and ready to walk out to the field when word from the union reaches the Yankees clubhouse. The Executive Board voted to strike on August 12 if an agreement hasn’t been reached. None of his teammates are surprised. Mattingly’s talked to Fehr enough to know that his chance to play in a World Series just took a big hit.
At least now he knows when he’ll be driving out to the house on Kentucky Lake. When—and if—he’ll be coming back to Yankee Stadium is anyone’s guess.