Baseball Strike Viewed As A Story Rather Than A Labor Question

The prospect of a baseball strike sends editors scurrying to compile a list of baseball movies that fans can rent in the event of a strike.

This is partly because fans are presumed to be in need of a baseball fix during a strike, but also because it’s natural to think of the players’ walkout as a baseball story rather than a labor issue.

I think many of us have a hard time making the connection between the baseball strike and familiar images of organized labor. It’s difficult, for instance, to imagine Barry Bonds warming his hands over a barrel fire on a chilly night outside Candlestick Park or Darren Daulton clapping along as Pete Seeger climbs off a bus, unslings his guitar and sings “You Can’t Break Me I’m Stickin’ with the Union!”

“Wherever there’s a little guy being denied salary arbitration, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a 10-and-five guy being traded to San Diego, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a lapsed $7.8 million contribution to a pension fund, wherever players are denied their share of revenue from the sale of jackets and caps …”And so on.This is not the fault of the players.

Baseball is simply more glamorous and entertaining than unionism. This is why newspapers print lists of baseball movies instead of labor movies during strikes and why Hollywood makes many times more baseball films than stories of unionism.

Heroic or fawning profiles of baseball players are legion - Jimmy Piersall, Monte Stratton, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson …

Similar profiles of labor leaders are rare. “Norma Rae” is one. Danny DeVito’s “Hoffa” is another. Warren Beatty’s profile of agitator John Reed, “Reds,” probably counts, although it played more like an intercontinental romance than a labor saga.

Movies are not kind to labor leaders. When we think of the union boss in cinema, we tend to think of Lee J. Cobb in “On the Waterfront,” a rugged, ruthless, corrupt stooge whose strings are pulled by the mob.

Even more measured and

thoughtful projects, such as John Sayles’ sympathetic account of organizing among turn-of-thecentury mine workers, “Matewan,” failed to generate box-office activity that matched its critical reception. (Ditto the recent French epic “Germinal.”)

On the other hand, when Sayles managed to combine the plight of exploited workers with baseball, as he did in “Eight Men Out,” he created one of the more interesting baseball movies ever made. His picture distinguished itself from other genre pictures by examining the economics of professional baseball, in this case from the perspective of the 1919 Chicago White Sox.

Today, player salaries soak up 58 percent of franchise revenue. In the days of the notorious “Black Sox,” most players made a few thousand dollars a year and accounted for only a tiny fraction of overall revenue. In “Eight Men Out,” Sayles argued that the exploitation of the players contributed to and even necessitated their decision to throw the World Series in exchange for hard cash.

I think that today, if anybody takes money to throw a World Series, it’s not going be be a player. It’s going to be Bill Giles or Bud Selig.

Now there’s a movie I’d pay to see.