Clinton Remains Optimistic But Says If Strike Continues, Replacements Will Stain Game
With just eight days left before the scheduled start of replacement baseball, President Clinton said Saturday he still hopes for a settlement that could bring back the striking major leaguers.
Clinton said he thought replacement players would stain the game, and predicted Little League teams would attract more interest than replacements. He said that if there isn’t a settlement soon, interest in baseball could drop to the level of soccer.
“I think people will be more interested in their minor leagues, the teams in their own Little Leagues in their communities, than they are in major league baseball,” Clinton said during an interview with ESPN radio. “It could become a community sport again, almost the way soccer is, if they don’t fix it.”
The sides didn’t talk Saturday, when mediator W.J. Usery went to Georgia because of a death in his family.
Usery said Friday night the next move was up to acting commissioner Bud Selig, who was due to telephone union head Donald Fehr sometime this weekend. Management lawyer Chuck O’Connor said he expected Selig and Fehr would be in touch either Saturday night or Sunday.
“I haven’t heard from him,” Fehr said Saturday night. “He was supposed to call me Friday. He was supposed to call Thursday and Wednesday.”
The National Labor Relations Board, meanwhile, is expected to give permission this week to seek an injunction against owners.
“I think there’s still a chance,” Clinton said. “Mr. Usery, the person I appointed to mediate this, is still working. And of course there are some developments involving - in the courts - involving the NLRB decisions that could have an impact on this.
“But I have to say, I will say again, I think both the players and the owners have to be aware the ultimately this game depends on the fans. And if the fans finally get sick of it and decide they’d rather do something else, that’s not good for baseball. And in the end, that is the ultimate hazard, that if it become so painfully clear that it’s no longer a sport and it’s just a business, then the customers may decide to take their business elsewhere.”
Clinton said the strike would permanently stain baseball.
“Just like the strike last year,” he said. “We were on the verge of having a shattering season in the best sense. … And the, boom, all of a sudden there was the strike and it was over with. So I think if you put that with a season of replacement players, I think there’s going to be a lot of diminished enthusiasm.”
Strike talk
The union may be in danger of splintering. The smoke that foretells of a growing conglagration within the ranks is rising; the rumors of players crossing are moungint. These days, conversations with strikers, as a general rule, go something like this: Five minutes of on-the-record, anti-owner rhetoric, followed by a pause, followed by the quiet question, “What do you think?”
They are having doubts. In 1972, when the average salary was about $20,000 and players were tied to their teams for life, fighting a prolonged battle with owners made sense. The objectives were clear and tangible. Now, when the median salary is about $500,000 per year and union members can play baseball for four or five years and never have to work another day in their lives, waging war doesn’t make as much sense. The rewards of playing - even under the owners’ salary cap proposal - are too fantastic to walk away from without internal debate. One question they are asking themselves is, why? The objectives aren’t quite so clear anymore.
The owners’ objective, however, is real and obtainable - break the union. If the hawks among the owners maintain control of the bargaining strategy and season actually begins with replacement players, they will sit back and wait for the Players Association to fall apart.
It’s interesting that so many players are lauding Orioles Owner Peter Angelos for speaking his mind and taking a stand for what he thinks is right. Phillies outfielder Lenny Dykstra did about the same thing, breaking ranks with his peers, and got blasted for doing so. Guess it’s all a matter of perspective.