Strike Could End, But Compromise Needed

Finally, the end of the baseball strike is in sight. Whether the sides get there in the next few days is unclear.

Once the National Labor Relations Board told owners Friday it was prepared to issue an unfair labor practice complaint against the salary cap, management backed down within hours. The cap was gone - as if it had never existed.

Several owners tried to portray it as a victory that would remove legal obstacles and advance negotiations. But the body language was clear: Management’s chief lawyer, Chuck O’Connor, looked like a dazed boxer. Union head Donald Fehr was trying to suppress a rare smile.

O’Connor said the NLRB never issued any finding. In the same room minutes earlier, NLRB spokesman Dave Parker said owners had violated the National Labor Relations Act by implementing their proposal when no legal impasse existed.

Parker, in the back of the room as O’Connor spoke, shook his head in disbelief.

Agent Tom Reich sat in another corner with a huge grin. Players were overjoyed.

“We think it is a major victory for the players,” Kansas City Royals pitcher David Cone said. “It just validates what we said all along, that the owners illegally imposed salary caps on the players and there was not an impasse then and there is not one now.”

One agent, speaking on the condition he not be identified, said the leverage “switched sides like a teeter-totter.”

But with President Clinton demanding a deal or progress by Monday, the union has to be careful not to overplay its leverage.

The NLRB’s decision and the owners’ revocation of the cap gave the union several options, all with problems:

1) End the strike, go back to work and sign contracts under the old system.

PROBLEM: Owners would lock them out and refuse to sign contracts even though they risk another collusion grievance. “We will not play baseball in 1995 under the old rules,” Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten said.

2) Continue to propose luxury taxes that have almost no effect:

PROBLEM: In order to have a deal, which the large-market clubs desperately want, they need something to switch the votes of the middle-market clubs.

3) Let Clinton’s deadline pass and find out what mediator W.J. Usery will propose.

PROBLEM: An imposed settlement is only a temporary solution and players may i not like it.

The most logical solution - not that logic means much in baseball - would be for both sides to work toward a small tax that would place a slight drag on salaries: more than the players want and less than the owners want.

Arbitration would be eliminated, replaced by a combination of guaranteed minimums, restricted free agency and unrestricted free agency.

Increased revenue sharing would begin even though there’s no cap.

Management’s goal of cost certainty wouldn’t be reached, but neither would the union’s goal of a completely free market.

But, finally, the games could begin again.