Baseball achieves stability with five-year agreement

NEW YORK – Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and union head Michael Weiner smiled and exchanged handshakes while others in the room dug into knishes and pigs in a blanket.

Not exactly the kind of scene that played out in sports labor talks this year.

Baseball ensured itself of 21 consecutive years of peace at a time the NBA season might be canceled because of a lockout and the NFL still is recovering from its CBA negotiations.

“We’ve learned,” Selig said Tuesday after players and owners signed an agreement for a five-year contract running until December 2016. “Nobody back in the ’70s, ’80s and the early ’90s, 1994, would ever believe that we would have 21 years of labor peace.”

The agreement makes MLB the first pro major league in North America to conduct blood tests for human growth hormone, allowing it during spring training and future offseasons but for now only studying whether it will be implemented during the regular season.

“MLB and the players union should be applauded for taking the strong step to implement the HGH test at the major league level to protect clean athletes,” said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

The deal, which must be ratified by both sides and drafted into a formal contract, expands the playoffs from eight to 10 teams by 2013, lessens draft-pick compensation for free agents, expands salary arbitration by a few players and for the first time allows teams to trade some draft selections. It also adds unprecedented restraints on signing bonuses for amateur players coming to the major leagues from high school, college and overseas, perhaps hurting MLB as it competes with the NFL and NBA for multisport talent.