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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2014 23:38:00 GMT -5
To the 1994 MLB players strike, the eighth (and, thankfully, last, at least to date) such stoppage in the game's history. The strike began on August 12, 1994, and ultimately resulted in the cancellations of both the remainder of the regular season and the World Series, the first Series-less year since 1904.
The long list of strike casualties included the Montreal Expos, which boasted baseball's best record when the strike hit and would ultimately move to Washington and become the Nationals. Tony Gwynn's historic march toward .400 and Matt Williams chase of both Babe Ruth and Roger Maris were both short-circuited, while players such as Goose Gossage and Bo Jackson would ultimately never play another major league game. Gossage and Charlie Hough are the only two players to have been active during all eight work stoppages, a rather dubious distinction of which neither is likely proud.
The financial losses for both sides were also staggering: $580 million in revenues for the owners and $230 million in salaries for the players. The strike finally ended when District Court judge Sonya Sotomayor issued a preliminary injunction against the owners on March 31, 1995. In the end, the owners did not get the salary cap they so desperately sought and the players union emerged stronger than ever. But it was a rather pyrrhic victory as attendance and television ratings plummeted and fans vented their anger toward owners and players alike.
The strike left significant scars that were still there in the proceeding decades, and even though baseball has enjoyed 20 years of labor peace, one has to wonder how different the baseball landscape would be today if owners and players had simply been able to settle their differences peacefully.
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Post by magnaestback on Aug 13, 2014 13:02:24 GMT -5
$580 million in revenues for the owners and $230 million in salaries for the players. Idiots, pretty hard to sympathize. If X agrees to play for 1 zillion, play. What someone else makes is really none of their concern.
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Post by Evil Yoda on Aug 13, 2014 13:39:01 GMT -5
The owners took shameless advantage of the players for the better part of a century, up to and including collusion. The players aren't going to trust the owners, and trust is essential to settling differences peaceably.
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Post by magnaestback on Aug 13, 2014 13:58:03 GMT -5
The owners took shameless advantage of the players for the better part of a century, up to and including collusion. The players aren't going to trust the owners, and trust is essential to settling differences peaceably. Football has it right with a cap. As much as I like seeing one make as much as possible the cap in this case makes sense. One cannot "buy" a championship. NOBODY ever forced Mantle, Brooks or Boog to play baseball, they did it willingly for an agreed price and were paid handsomely. I never questioned the owner of a company I worked for how much he made, as long as I got MY agreed to amount what business was it of mine?
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Post by Moses on Aug 13, 2014 14:03:20 GMT -5
The owners took shameless advantage of the players for the better part of a century, up to and including collusion. The players aren't going to trust the owners, and trust is essential to settling differences peaceably. Football has it right with a cap. As much as I like seeing one make as much as possible the cap in this case makes sense. One cannot "buy" a championship. NOBODY ever forced Mantle, Brooks or Boog to play baseball, they did it willingly for an agreed price and were paid handsomely. I never questioned the owner of a company I worked for how much he made, as long as I got MY agreed to amount what business was it of mine? You must be joking me. The crap that the owners put baseball players through was the usual corporate greed mentality. Plus the fact they didn't even let black players play. Pretty shameful. It's kind of similar to musicians getting ripped off by record companies. No one pays money to go see owners. No one pays money so record company execs can get big salaries. The money, after expenses, should go to the players and the musicians.
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Post by magnaestback on Aug 13, 2014 14:06:17 GMT -5
Football has it right with a cap. As much as I like seeing one make as much as possible the cap in this case makes sense. One cannot "buy" a championship. NOBODY ever forced Mantle, Brooks or Boog to play baseball, they did it willingly for an agreed price and were paid handsomely. I never questioned the owner of a company I worked for how much he made, as long as I got MY agreed to amount what business was it of mine? You must be joking me. The crap that the owners put baseball players through was the usual corporate greed mentality. Plus the fact they didn't even let black players play. Pretty shameful.It's kind of similar to musicians getting ripped off by record companies. No one pays money to go see owners. No one pays money so record company execs can get big salaries. The money, after expenses, should go to the players and the musicians. The strike was 20 years ago, NOT 60............ try and keep up.
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Post by Moses on Aug 13, 2014 14:20:57 GMT -5
You must be joking me. The crap that the owners put baseball players through was the usual corporate greed mentality. Plus the fact they didn't even let black players play. Pretty shameful.It's kind of similar to musicians getting ripped off by record companies. No one pays money to go see owners. No one pays money so record company execs can get big salaries. The money, after expenses, should go to the players and the musicians. The strike was 20 years ago, NOT 60............ try and keep up. Lol You didn't like being reminded of that did you?
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Post by magnaestback on Aug 13, 2014 14:41:48 GMT -5
The strike was 20 years ago, NOT 60............ try and keep up. Lol You didn't like being reminded of that did you? I had what exactly to do with it.............. or current day baseball for that matter? Baseball sucks anymore. >shrug< I'll go to a Shorebird's game because they're HUNGRY and run everything out. Plus the atmosphere is much like a Bill Veeck show, pretty entertaining.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2014 23:27:03 GMT -5
Football has it right with a cap. As much as I like seeing one make as much as possible the cap in this case makes sense. One cannot "buy" a championship. NOBODY ever forced Mantle, Brooks or Boog to play baseball, they did it willingly for an agreed price and were paid handsomely. I never questioned the owner of a company I worked for how much he made, as long as I got MY agreed to amount what business was it of mine? You must be joking me. The crap that the owners put baseball players through was the usual corporate greed mentality. Plus the fact they didn't even let black players play. Pretty shameful. It's kind of similar to musicians getting ripped off by record companies. No one pays money to go see owners. No one pays money so record company execs can get big salaries. The money, after expenses, should go to the players and the musicians. Except most baseball teams weren't owned by corporate conglomerates; in the beginning they were largely owned by single proprietors such as Connie Mack, Barney Dreyfuss, Charles Comiskey and Charles Ebbetts. These guys weren't the deep-pocketed owners of the modern era; in most cases, they got in on the ground floor, purchased small shares of the team and eventually bought controlling interest. A number of them went broke. Charles Somers, the first owner of the Cleveland Indians in the nascent days of the American League, bankrolled a number of the league's struggling franchises in order to keep the American League afloat. By 1915, however, he was bankrupt, tapped out with his creditors and finally had to sell the team.
True, a lot of them were cheap--most notably Comiskey and his underpaid 1919 Black Sox--but many of them didn't have huge personal fortunes to fall back on, either. Those who did, such as Phil Wrigley of the Cubs or John Galbreath of the Pirates, typified the so-called "sportsman owner." They may not have known much about baseball, but they owned the clubs more for civic pride than anything else and typically had little to do with the day-to-day operation of their teams. Phil Wrigley was said to have never taken a dime of salary or a dividend out of the Cubs in the 40-plus years that he owned the team; the team was more of a family hobby than a business.
As for black players, well, very few professional sports leagues had them back then. Frtiz Pollard and Bobby Marshall played in the NFL's inaugural season in 1920, but by 1933 no team in the league had black players, and it would remain that way until after World War II. Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion, and would retain his title from 1908 until 1915, but it would be 22 years before another black fighter--a chap by the name of Joe Louis--would become heavyweight champion. The NBA's color barrier wasn't broken until 1950.
(And while we're talking blacks and boxing, can you name the first black boxing champion of any weight class? Hint: he was from Baltimore.)
Owners and GMs back then were very much creatures of their time. Owners understood ironclad control, while GMs understood that their job was to produce as many players as possible and pay them as little as possible. Once the job entailed anything more than that--such as when Marvin Miller began bringing labor relations to the fore in the mid '60s--they were in trouble. They ran a business without being businessmen themselves, which was a shaky formula in the post-Messersmith years.
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Post by magnaestback on Aug 13, 2014 23:35:59 GMT -5
Joe Gans for 1,000 Alex.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2014 23:41:15 GMT -5
The owners took shameless advantage of the players for the better part of a century, up to and including collusion. The players aren't going to trust the owners, and trust is essential to settling differences peaceably. Football has it right with a cap. As much as I like seeing one make as much as possible the cap in this case makes sense. One cannot "buy" a championship. NOBODY ever forced Mantle, Brooks or Boog to play baseball, they did it willingly for an agreed price and were paid handsomely. I never questioned the owner of a company I worked for how much he made, as long as I got MY agreed to amount what business was it of mine? A salary cap alone is not going to result in economic equilibrium. All it would likely do is transfer more money from players to owners. The NFL salary cap works because the league shares virtually all of its revenues and sells its broadcast rights collectively. Every team has a relatively equal stake. That would be almost impossible to do in an everyday sport like baseball.
I agree that it's tiresome watching teams like the Yankees simply try and win championships with money, but a salary cap alone isn't going to bring true parity to major league baseball.
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Post by magnaestback on Aug 13, 2014 23:50:53 GMT -5
Football has it right with a cap. As much as I like seeing one make as much as possible the cap in this case makes sense. One cannot "buy" a championship. NOBODY ever forced Mantle, Brooks or Boog to play baseball, they did it willingly for an agreed price and were paid handsomely. I never questioned the owner of a company I worked for how much he made, as long as I got MY agreed to amount what business was it of mine? A salary cap alone is not going to result in economic equilibrium. All it would likely do is transfer more money from players to owners. The NFL salary cap works because the league shares virtually all of its revenues and sells its broadcast rights collectively. Every team has a relatively equal stake. That would be almost impossible to do in an everyday sport like baseball.
I agree that it's tiresome watching teams like the Yankees simply try and win championships with money, but a salary cap alone isn't going to bring true parity to major league baseball.
Probably not with a 162 game season and huge vs small markets but it WOULD be a start. Remember Steinbrenner with 6 million dollar Reggie? It went downhill from there.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2014 0:01:12 GMT -5
Joe Gans for 1,000 Alex. You are correct!
A couple of years ago (I think it was 2010, the 100-year anniversary of Gans' death), there was a story in The Sun about a local filmmaker who was attempting to put together a documentary on Gans' life. I haven't heard anything more about it, however, which is too bad since I would have liked to have seen what he came up with.
For a guy who was such a groundbreaker (the Goldfield Hotel, which he owned and operated, was one of the first such integrated establishments in the country), I'm not aware of anything in the entire city that commemorates him. It's almost as if he never existed, which is kind of a shame.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2014 0:37:13 GMT -5
A salary cap alone is not going to result in economic equilibrium. All it would likely do is transfer more money from players to owners. The NFL salary cap works because the league shares virtually all of its revenues and sells its broadcast rights collectively. Every team has a relatively equal stake. That would be almost impossible to do in an everyday sport like baseball.
I agree that it's tiresome watching teams like the Yankees simply try and win championships with money, but a salary cap alone isn't going to bring true parity to major league baseball.
Probably not with a 162 game season and huge vs small markets but it WOULD be a start. Remember Steinbrenner with 6 million dollar Reggie? It went downhill from there. I think the total for Reggie was around $3 million, which was still a staggering sum for the time. He might have been the only sensible signing of that first year of free agency. At least Reggie could put people in the seats.
I've sometimes wondered how free agency might have been different had the Yankees not won those first two post-Messersmith World Series in '77 and '78. Other owners no doubt viewed the Yankees' success as proof positive that free agency offered them a chance to buy what they couldn't otherwise build: a winning team. There isn't an owner in baseball who doesn't like to think that his club is just one player away, so if George Steinbrenner could do it, why couldn't they?
So they kept throwing ever more ridiculous amounts of money at free agents in the desperate hope of coming up with a winner before the train hit them. Few ever succeeded, but all of those hyper-inflated contracts remained forever embedded in baseball's salary structure. Had the Yankees initially flopped, however, perhaps more clubs would have tested the free agent waters with a bit more caution and not bid so furiously.
It isn't free agency, however, that's the real driver of baseball salaries. That would be arbitration, which was a rather harmless mechanism in the pre-Messersmith days. But once it was linked with free agency, it became a monster. To the clubs, free agency driven by arbitration is a gun to the head and a knife to the throat. Trouble is, the owners have been fighting on the wrong front for almost 40 years. Arbitration is the real enemy.
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Post by magnaestback on Aug 14, 2014 2:16:35 GMT -5
Probably not with a 162 game season and huge vs small markets but it WOULD be a start. Remember Steinbrenner with 6 million dollar Reggie? It went downhill from there. I think the total for Reggie was around $3 million, which was still a staggering sum for the time. He might have been the only sensible signing of that first year of free agency. At least Reggie could put people in the seats.
I've sometimes wondered how free agency might have been different had the Yankees not won those first two post-Messersmith World Series in '77 and '78. Other owners no doubt viewed the Yankees' success as proof positive that free agency offered them a chance to buy what they couldn't otherwise build: a winning team. There isn't an owner in baseball who doesn't like to think that his club is just one player away, so if George Steinbrenner could do it, why couldn't they?
So they kept throwing ever more ridiculous amounts of money at free agents in the desperate hope of coming up with a winner before the train hit them. Few ever succeeded, but all of those hyper-inflated contracts remained forever embedded in baseball's salary structure. Had the Yankees initially flopped, however, perhaps more clubs would have tested the free agent waters with a bit more caution and not bid so furiously.
It isn't free agency, however, that's the real driver of baseball salaries. That would be arbitration, which was a rather harmless mechanism in the pre-Messersmith days. But once it was linked with free agency, it became a monster. To the clubs, free agency driven by arbitration is a gun to the head and a knife to the throat. Trouble is, the owners have been fighting on the wrong front for almost 40 years. Arbitration is the real enemy.
It may have been I dunno, remember he was here 1 year knowing he was going to the Yankee's the next year. 6 Million Dollar Man was a hot on TV......... hence 6 Million Dollar Reggie was his nickname. A buddy of mine was a insurance adjuster, one of his perks from a contractor (got jobs I'm sure) was tickets visitor side at Memorial, my feet propped up on the dugout and a 3 dollar beer, life was good and pretty simple at the time! Remember seeing rookie Cal Jr. get beaned by a NASTY fast ball and Ken Griffey Jr signing balls for kids, nice guy. Cecil Cooper had no problems talking baseball with us when he could. The girls in the stands liked Paul Molitor, guess they thought he was the bomb, I dunno but he could hit a ball. My father worked for a food brokerage, same deal except Colts tickets lesser seats, all my bases wee covered! Howads Subway in N. Linthicum was usually the before and after stop of a game night.
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Post by Evil Yoda on Aug 14, 2014 10:03:35 GMT -5
I never questioned the owner of a company I worked for how much he made, as long as I got MY agreed to amount what business was it of mine? I never questioned it, either. I just moved on when I felt poorly treated. On two occasions I had managers pull me into their office and ask me what they could do to keep me. Each time, I told them the time to have that conversation was before I left. Employers pay the least they can possibly get away with, because in the modern era management considers itself obligated to the shareholders, and no one else (and sometimes not even them). Other stakeholders don't matter. You've got to be ready to move on, or you've got to be ready to fight for a better deal. Once I heard a manager, upset because this particular company's substandard pay rates were causing an exodus, say "What more to these greedy SOBs want?" This guy drew a six figure bonus every year, and yet he didn't have clue one.
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Post by Moses on Aug 20, 2014 13:31:15 GMT -5
You must be joking me. The crap that the owners put baseball players through was the usual corporate greed mentality. Plus the fact they didn't even let black players play. Pretty shameful. It's kind of similar to musicians getting ripped off by record companies. No one pays money to go see owners. No one pays money so record company execs can get big salaries. The money, after expenses, should go to the players and the musicians. Except most baseball teams weren't owned by corporate conglomerates; in the beginning they were largely owned by single proprietors such as Connie Mack, Barney Dreyfuss, Charles Comiskey and Charles Ebbetts. These guys weren't the deep-pocketed owners of the modern era; in most cases, they got in on the ground floor, purchased small shares of the team and eventually bought controlling interest. A number of them went broke. Charles Somers, the first owner of the Cleveland Indians in the nascent days of the American League, bankrolled a number of the league's struggling franchises in order to keep the American League afloat. By 1915, however, he was bankrupt, tapped out with his creditors and finally had to sell the team.
True, a lot of them were cheap--most notably Comiskey and his underpaid 1919 Black Sox--but many of them didn't have huge personal fortunes to fall back on, either. Those who did, such as Phil Wrigley of the Cubs or John Galbreath of the Pirates, typified the so-called "sportsman owner." They may not have known much about baseball, but they owned the clubs more for civic pride than anything else and typically had little to do with the day-to-day operation of their teams. Phil Wrigley was said to have never taken a dime of salary or a dividend out of the Cubs in the 40-plus years that he owned the team; the team was more of a family hobby than a business.
As for black players, well, very few professional sports leagues had them back then. Frtiz Pollard and Bobby Marshall played in the NFL's inaugural season in 1920, but by 1933 no team in the league had black players, and it would remain that way until after World War II. Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion, and would retain his title from 1908 until 1915, but it would be 22 years before another black fighter--a chap by the name of Joe Louis--would become heavyweight champion. The NBA's color barrier wasn't broken until 1950.
(And while we're talking blacks and boxing, can you name the first black boxing champion of any weight class? Hint: he was from Baltimore.)
Owners and GMs back then were very much creatures of their time. Owners understood ironclad control, while GMs understood that their job was to produce as many players as possible and pay them as little as possible. Once the job entailed anything more than that--such as when Marvin Miller began bringing labor relations to the fore in the mid '60s--they were in trouble. They ran a business without being businessmen themselves, which was a shaky formula in the post-Messersmith years.
Have you read about the Yankees owners and the battles they had with the salaries of even Hall of Fame players?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2014 23:07:30 GMT -5
Except most baseball teams weren't owned by corporate conglomerates; in the beginning they were largely owned by single proprietors such as Connie Mack, Barney Dreyfuss, Charles Comiskey and Charles Ebbetts. These guys weren't the deep-pocketed owners of the modern era; in most cases, they got in on the ground floor, purchased small shares of the team and eventually bought controlling interest. A number of them went broke. Charles Somers, the first owner of the Cleveland Indians in the nascent days of the American League, bankrolled a number of the league's struggling franchises in order to keep the American League afloat. By 1915, however, he was bankrupt, tapped out with his creditors and finally had to sell the team.
True, a lot of them were cheap--most notably Comiskey and his underpaid 1919 Black Sox--but many of them didn't have huge personal fortunes to fall back on, either. Those who did, such as Phil Wrigley of the Cubs or John Galbreath of the Pirates, typified the so-called "sportsman owner." They may not have known much about baseball, but they owned the clubs more for civic pride than anything else and typically had little to do with the day-to-day operation of their teams. Phil Wrigley was said to have never taken a dime of salary or a dividend out of the Cubs in the 40-plus years that he owned the team; the team was more of a family hobby than a business.
As for black players, well, very few professional sports leagues had them back then. Frtiz Pollard and Bobby Marshall played in the NFL's inaugural season in 1920, but by 1933 no team in the league had black players, and it would remain that way until after World War II. Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion, and would retain his title from 1908 until 1915, but it would be 22 years before another black fighter--a chap by the name of Joe Louis--would become heavyweight champion. The NBA's color barrier wasn't broken until 1950.
(And while we're talking blacks and boxing, can you name the first black boxing champion of any weight class? Hint: he was from Baltimore.)
Owners and GMs back then were very much creatures of their time. Owners understood ironclad control, while GMs understood that their job was to produce as many players as possible and pay them as little as possible. Once the job entailed anything more than that--such as when Marvin Miller began bringing labor relations to the fore in the mid '60s--they were in trouble. They ran a business without being businessmen themselves, which was a shaky formula in the post-Messersmith years.
Have you read about the Yankees owners and the battles they had with the salaries of even Hall of Fame players? Yep.
When Mickey Mantle held out after a triple crown season--1956, I think it was--Yankee management let it be known that they had dirt on him that could be a bit embarrassing if it got out.
"It could hurt your reputation, Mickey," GM George Weiss told the slugger. "To say nothing of your marriage."
When the Yankees talked salary, they typically would factor in World Series money. (I guess you could do that when you made it to the Series almost every year.) If a guy was asking for, say, twenty-five grand, they'd come back with a lower figure and remind the player that he stood to make thousands more from the Series. Incredibly arrogant, but usually spot on as well.
The Yankees tight-fistedness eventually came back to bite them, however (hard to believe I'm even typing such a sentence). Their refusal to pay amateurs any more than the six thousand minimum salary and the $4 thousand bonus meant that a lot of the best players signed elsewhere. Their farm system dried up and the dynasty eventually collapsed.
Hard to believe that the words "Yankees" and "cheap" could actually be used in the same sentence.
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