The biggest problem in the way of settling the baseball strike, as I see it, is the players are trained competitors. As little boys, and later when they reach high school age, they learn that, to win, they must compete. This is No. 1. The second and last requirement is an unshakable confidence in their ability.
Many fans regard a .220 hitter or a 16-game loser as failed players. The fans are wrong. The odds of reaching the big leagues are enormous. Only 8 percent of the players selected in the annual summer drafts of amateur free agents climb to the majors. Getting there is a considerable achievement. They are winners, not losers.
Orel Hershiser of the Los Angeles Dodgers is typical. He doesn’t have the best arm, or the best stuff, but he has been among the best pitchers in baseball and in 1988 broke Don Drysdale’s record for most consecutive scoreless innings. Now he appears to be succeeding in a comeback after severe arm surgery.
“He’s all guts, and he’s a winner,” Tom Lasorda, his manager, has said dozens of times.
Hershiser is a winner. So is teammate Brett Butler, who is only 5 feet 8 inches tall but has had a brilliant big-league career. Same for Paul Molitor of the Toronto Blue Jays. The list of ferocious competitors is endless.
Hershiser, Butler and Molitor are mentioned because they are staunch members of the Players Association and have been active in the negotiations with the owners. To a man, they insist they never will accept management’s demand for a salary cap.
On Friday, after the owners dismissed what appeared to be the union’s last-ditch proposal for settlement, their confidence was unbroken. It was the last of the ninth, and the owners didn’t blink.
Said Hershiser: “I’m prepared to sit out as long as it takes. We don’t want to come back and have our salaries subject to a cap. We are going into uncharted waters. No one knows what will happen.”
I don’t know, either. Negotiations of a sort continued here Saturday-the subject was pensions, not the cap. Only three management people attended: John Harrington of the Boston Red Sox, Stan Kasten of the Atlanta Braves and Wendy Selig-Prieb, an executive with the Milwaukee Brewers and daughter of acting Commissioner Bud Selig.
More significant was the roll call of the owners who have gone home. Selig returned to Milwaukee Friday night. Jerry McMorris, the moderate, also went home. So did Atlanta’s Bill Bartholomay. White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf departed for Chicago Saturday on a noon flight.
“If I thought we were close to a deal, I wouldn’t be going home,” Reinsdorf said.
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I asked if the odds against a deal were 99-1.
“No,” Reinsdorf said, “It’s more like 95-1.”
A management attorney who attended Saturday’s negotiations came away shaking his head in disbelief.
“The players just don’t understand they are losing,” he said.
What the players fail to realize is the previously “patsy” owners, for the first time in a quarter of a century of bargaining, have not collapsed. As Selig said at his Friday press conference, “Both sides are very united.”
In the beginning, when the players took their strike vote, many if not most anticipated a brief shutdown-two weeks, three at the most. The strike is now in its fifth week.
And, unless the players are willing to make an 11th hour compromise and agree to some sort of a cap, the season is over.
Much has been said about the fact none of the players publicly has broken ranks. But what they say privately is not known. Many are eager to return to the field, even with a salary cap. Eventually, they will surrender. And the longer they hold out, the more they will lose.
Colorado’s McMorris, who had been a moderate anxious to continue the season, has admitted to union officials he is powerless. He has told them there is little likelihood 21 of the 28 owners, the number required for approval, would agree to a settlement unless the players accept a cap and/or a percentage of gross revenues.
I sympathize with the players. I, too, would object to a cap but nonetheless am aware that player salaries, at least for the next three or four years, will not be diminished. It will take that long before a cap is fully in place. The overall effect may not be known until the year 2000.
The players insist they are fighting for tomorrow’s players. But even if they should win, the cost of victory will be much smaller than the gain.
The owners, in their private meetings, have discussed but haven’t reached a decision on what they will do next spring. The chances are they will open their training camps and invite their best minor-league prospects. I doubt they will begin the championship season with minor-leaguers; their hope is that some of the major-leaguers will return.