Give the players association high marks for creativity.
But the proposal it made to owners last week does little other than signal how far apart the sides are in baseball’s latest labor negotiation.
We’re in for a long, difficult and ultimately ugly tug of war that could lead to another of the work stoppages that have made major-league baseball a case study in greed. The belief here has been there’s no way either side would be dumb enough to shut the game down again after the debacle of 1994-95, but you never should underestimate Donald Fehr’s gall.
Ownership will not lock out players. If talks don’t lead to a reasonable conclusion, clubs will take their shot at achieving a revolutionary level of revenue sharing and a tax on the highest payrolls in an arena where they almost never have won: the courts.
The proposal on the table immediately could take the Yankees’ revenue sharing obligation from $26.5 million per year to more than $70 million.
History says Bud Selig is overmatched against Fehr, Gene Orza and the other estimable lawyers representing the Major League Baseball Players Association. But the possible pro-management leaning of a National Labor Relations Board answering to President Bush’s administration gives owners a better chance than many believe.
So, too, could the arrogance of a union that won’t acknowledge how its 25-year unbeaten streak has tipped the scales too far in its favor.
It’s hard to see how union leadership could call a strike vote given the issues on the table, which don’t include a salary cap or any of ownership’s hard-line proposals from past negotiations. But no longer should a strike be ruled out.
Players already have zinged Selig by circulating reports of a possible boycott of this summer’s All-Star Game, which is scheduled for Milwaukee’s Miller Park. If they are desperate enough, they could try to divide the unusually unified owners with a late-season strike, such as the one that brought down the curtain in 1994.
That strike did nothing for anyone–except possibly Cubs fan who were happy to see the White Sox denied a chance to get to the World Series–and another one wouldn’t either. But given the position of players on an overhaul of revenue sharing and a luxury tax, measures a panel of independent economists proposed for Major League Baseball, another one cannot be ruled out.
Presented with a straightforward proposal from Selig on Dec. 3, players waited until March 13 to make a counterproposal that was Greek to the owners’ English. If there was a book about the two positions, it would be titled “Owners Are from Mars, Players Are from Venus.”
Focusing on the growing disparity in payroll, as well as the historical inequity producing revenue disparity–large markets are not required to share their broadcast revenue with the teams necessary to generate it–owners proposed increasing revenue sharing from 20 percent to 50.
They would use a system that puts the lion’s share of the increase on the Yankees and other teams with the most revenue. They also propose to establish a 50 percent tax on all compensation above $98 million.
Ducking the call for economic change, the players association proposed to “bridge the gap” using players and draft picks. They offered a series of measures designed to address competitive balance without significantly affecting the Yankees’ ability to snare top free agents such as Mike Mussina and Jason Giambi, while still rewarding loyal foot soldiers like Jorge Posada (five years, $51 million) with deals most teams could not afford.
Fehr acknowledges the need for more revenue sharing, but the system he is proposing would have raised the Yankees’ contribution only $3.3 million based on 2001 revenue. Instead he devised a series of cosmetic measures that actually could give financial powerhouses a bigger edge.
Among Fehr’s proposals:
– Teams can trade draft picks and the negotiating rights to unsigned players.
– A system in which losing teams would get more draft picks than top teams.
– The creation of an annual competitive-balance draft in which bad teams could take one player from top teams (albeit not one on their 25-man rosters).
Fehr didn’t pull these proposals out of a hat. Selig’s Blue Ribbon study suggested all three. But they were secondary recommendations, listed beneath the economic measures the clubs are proposing and the players are rejecting.
The basic premise of the report is that “baseball operates under an anachronistic economic model, unlike the NFL and NBA,” and it’s hard to see how the movement of fringe players would energize franchises whose broadcast revenues are limited severely.
Many club executives, including the Cubs’ Andy MacPhail, who last week was appointed to Selig’s negotiating team, believe teams such as the Yankees would be the winners if low-revenue franchises could trade top draft picks.
It’s conceivable, if not likely, that Mark Prior would be in the Yankees’ camp instead of the Cubs’ if Minnesota had been able to trade the No. 1 pick last year. The Twins may have benefited in the short run, getting a player or two who might have helped in their surprising 2001 run, but the system needs to give bottom-tier teams top incoming players for the long haul.
Manpower usually wasn’t a problem for the Confederacy, yet Robert E. Lee’s armies ultimately had no chance. They didn’t have the economic resources.
That dynamic is just as true in baseball. Can a handful of reinforcements really make a difference?
