One Year Later, Baseball Still Hasn’t Recovered Last Season’s Strike Has Players, Owners And Fans Wondering Why

The commissioner’s office on Park Avenue is still vacant, sometimes used instead as a stockroom.

There’s no agreement in sight between players and owners, mostly because they’ve held no major meetings since March.

Fans, having been flipped the finger and slapped in the face by former All-Stars, have stayed away from the ballparks, driving down attendance by nearly 20 percent.

NBC and ABC, which split showing the expanded playoffs this October, say they’re fed up with the sport and won’t televise any more games for the rest of the century.

So, exactly a year after the baseball strike started Saturday, what was gained by anyone when the 232-day walkout wrecked the most exciting season in decades and wiped out the World Series?

“It was a million-dollar waste of time for me,” said Philadelphia outfielder Andy Van Slyke, echoing a popular sentiment among players.

“If I had to do it over again, I would have waited a lot later to strike,” he said. “We’re still moving like two trains headed on the same track.”

At least, though, there’s the promise - make that possibility, because neither side has promised - that this year’s expanded playoffs and World Series won’t again be canceled by a labor problem.

And there’s Cal Ripken, chugging toward Lou Gehrig’s record and symbolizing all that’s right in the sport, and Hideo Nomo, its brightest new light.

As Ripken recently wrote to a 10-year-old fan who’d asked for an autograph: “P.S. Always remember baseball is a great game!”

Plus, there’s Greg Maddux going for his fourth straight Cy Young Award, the Cleveland Indians streaking toward their first postseason appearance since 1954 and the chance that the Colorado Rockies might make it in their third year since expansion.

The most interesting races, however, may be for the wild-card spots. Imagine that, so much interest in a chase to be second-best.

Even so, that hasn’t been able to erase the specter of the strike.

Replacement players in spring training, a postponed opening day and replacement umpires at the start of the regular season were among the many results caused when players and owners collided last Aug. 12.

Several record chases were ruined in 1994, and most were virtually eliminated this year because of the cutdown, 144-game schedule.

Tony Gwynn lost his chance to become baseball’s first .400 hitter since Ted Williams in 1941, finishing at .394 when the season stopped, and Matt Williams, Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas lost all hope of reaching Roger Maris’ mark of 61 home runs.

“This is not an anniversary that one particularly wants to remember,” said Don Fehr, head of the players’ union.

Boston Red Sox chief executive officer John Harrington, head of the owners’ negotiating team, admits peace isn’t coming soon.

“The question is, ‘What’s doable?”’ he said.

The whole mess has left those on the field and in the seats shaking their heads.

“In my wildest dreams, I didn’t think we’d be sitting here a year later without an agreement,” New York Mets manager Dallas Green said.

“It’s just a business,” Roland McDowell, 50, of Elmer, N.J., said last week in Cooperstown at the Hall of Fame ceremonies. “It’s getting harder to follow.”

The fans, meanwhile, have struck back, so to speak. Going into this weekend, only the Red Sox and Indians had shown gains at the gate, and those were just increases of 1 percent for both teams. The San Francisco Giants, who have been offering free admission to kids, are among six clubs that are down 30 percent at the gate.

And for all the players signing extra autographs, throwing more balls into the stands and taking more time to talk with fans, those efforts have been overshadowed.

Barry Bonds blasted fans who booed him, Jack McDowell flipped his middle finger at fans at Yankee Stadium who heckled him and Chili Davis poked a young man in the face - the wrong person, it turned out - he thought was hounding him.

The list of sorry events grew longer Thursday night when umpires forfeited a game at Dodger Stadium between St. Louis and Los Angeles. The forfeit came after fans pelted the field with souvenir baseballs after Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda and stars Raul Mondesi and Eric Karros were ejected.

“It’s another black eye for baseball,” umpire crew chief Bob Davidson said.