The battle over a new labor agreement hasn’t even begun, but the owners’ plan to eliminate two major-league franchises already has set off shock waves in the offices of the players association.
“This decision has been made unilaterally, without any attempt to negotiate with the players, apparently without any serious consideration of other options, including relocation, and seemingly with little concern for the interests of the fans,” union head Donald Fehr said. “We consider this action to be inconsistent with the law, our contract and, perhaps most important, the long-term welfare of the sport.”
When baseball owners and the players union agreed to a five-year deal after the 1996 season, Arizona and Tampa Bay were franchises in waiting. Yet Diambondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo said that day the deal was the best of all alternatives.
“Do you want to walk off a cliff now or walk off a cliff five years from now?” Colangelo said. “I’d rather build relationships now and prevent that from happening five years down the road.”
But five years later, only two days after Colangelo’s Diamondbacks won a World Series faster than any other expansion team, owners voted to pay two teams to walk off that cliff. Tampa Bay may be one of them, as baseball turns from one of history’s most exciting World Series to another in a long line of labor squabbles.
“Over this last season and especially over the last several weeks, we have been reminded vividly of the special place baseball holds in America,” Fehr said. “This makes it all the more unfortunate that the clubs would choose this moment to dash the hopes of so many of its fans. And of course, this is the worst manner in which to begin the process of negotiating a new collective-bargaining agreement. We had hoped that we were in a new era, one that would see a much better relationship between players and owners.”
The elimination of two teams means 80 major-league jobs, or two 40-man rosters, will vanish, not to mention the dispersal of hundreds of minor-league players. Owners said they have the right to eliminate teams without the union’s approval but conceded they must negotiate the specifics of how to disperse the players on eliminated teams to the remaining 28 clubs.
The teams under the gun each have failed in attempts to get new stadiums built. Since the collective-bargaining agreement was signed Nov. 26, 1996, new ballparks have opened in Seattle, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Houston, San Francisco, Atlanta and Detroit, with Cincinnati and San Diego on the way. All but San Francisco’s Pacific Bell Park were built primarily with taxpayer money.
“Definitely if we had a stadium built we wouldn’t be talking about this,” Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz told ESPN. “But . . . I understand that playing in Minnesota there are a lot of taxes, and people don’t want to spend their hard-earned money to build a stadium for, quote, unquote, overpaid babies. If they want baseball in Minnesota, they might have to dish out some money. If not, it’s a shame to see it go.”
Asked why the owners couldn’t take the money to buy out the two folding franchises–up to a combined $500 million–and help the two teams get new stadiums, Commissioner Bud Selig was adamant.
“We’ve said it publicly and we’ve said it privately, baseball is not in a position to help teams and build stadiums,” Selig said. “Each owner in many markets has had to do that, whether it’s Milwaukee or Atlanta or San Diego or Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Colorado. . . . We’ve done revenue sharing, we’ve done a lot of things to help people over the last five or six years that I’m proud of. [But] we’re dealing with a different life today, and so each community has to make its own judgment.”
Owners in low-revenue markets complain they can’t compete with big-money teams such as the Yankees, Dodgers and Diamondbacks. The high-revenue teams don’t want to give up any more money to revenue sharing.
The five-year agreement, which just expired, called for a luxury tax of 35 percent for payrolls above $51 million in 1997 and above $55 million in 1998, and 34 percent for payrolls above $58.9 million in 1999. But there was no luxury tax in the final two years of the contract in 2000 and 2001.
No small-market team has won the World Series since the 1991 Twins, whose payroll was 15th of the 26 existing teams. But the elimination of 50 players on major-league rosters wouldn’t be bad for baseball’s quality level, some predict.
“It’s really sad because so many people on teams, or who work for teams and in the minor leagues, are going to have uncertain futures in these trying times,” White Sox manager Jerry Manuel said. “But I believe fans are going to see a better quality of baseball, day in, day out. It’ll be a little more competitive. Some of the big-money players will go to lesser teams, and some of those will be franchise players.”
Among those franchise players could be Montreal outfielder Vladimir Guerrero or Twins shortstop Cristian Guzman, a 23-year-old with a contract that runs through 2004. Imagine Sox killer Joe Mays pitching for the Sox, or the Cubs getting Twins minor-league catcher Joe Mauer, the top pick in the 2001 draft.
No one knows how the players will be dispersed, which still leaves a lot of holes in the story.
“There’s so many moving parts to this puzzle, that we are plowing historic ground here,” Selig said. “We understand there are going to be a fair number of potholes along the way.”
Annual home attendance records
Major League Baseball officials on Tuesday decided to contract two teams but did not announce which ones. Speculation has focused on five teams with poor attendance records.
Florida Marlins, Anaheim Angels, Minnesota Twins, Montreal Expos, Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Scale in millions
1995-2001
Sources: Total Baseball, The Sports Network.
Chicago Tribune.
See microfilm for complete graphic.
