BASEBALL now faces a perfect storm. On top of The Tie, on top of cryo-frozen Ted Williams’s battling offspring, on top of steroid use, on top of Alex Rodriguez’s $252 million contract, major league baseball faces another strike. What makes this storm so perfect, is the timing.
Across the land people are saying that a baseball strike would cripple, or kill, the game. Maybe. Back in ’94, people said that same thing, but fans returned to the game when the strike was over. Sure, Cal Ripken had to save the image of the game, pretty much by himself, but the point is, fans came back. Baseball survived.
Why would it be any different this time? September 11.
As of right now the owners and players are eyeing a strike date in late August. Let’s say they strike on August 23, a Friday. (Last time, in ’94, the union walked out on a Friday, to try to bury the news in the weekend.) They’ll only have 18 days to put things right before the first anniversary of September 11. It’s possible that all of baseball’s labor disputes–contraction, drug testing, revenue sharing, the luxury tax–can be settled in 18 days. But not likely.
Now imagine it’s Wednesday, September 11, 2002. Beginning the weekend before, every major media outlet shifts its focus to the anniversary. The “Today” show and “Good Morning America” are filming on location next to the hole where the World Trade Center used to be. Newsweek and Time have the anniversary on the cover. USA Today, the New York Times, and every other paper in America has the memorial ceremonies and “coping one year later” stories on the front page all week. “Dateline,” “20/20,” and “60 Minutes” all devote nearly their entire shows to the event all week.
And the only story in the news, the little yellow flap on the cover of Newsweek, is: “Baseball Strike Drags On.”
What’s different today is that in 1994 the players looked like over-paid crybabies, petty thugs trying to get richer than rich, and the owners looked like despicable, covetous Mafiosi. In 1994, they were unattractive, sure, but they were standing in the public square all by themselves.
This time we’ll see them in high relief. Standing next to every platoon right-fielder who wants an extra $1.2 million and doesn’t want to be tested for steroids and every owner who wants to bleed taxpayers out of another publicly financed stadium and hold onto his monopoly rights will be the ghost of a dead firefighter who made $45,000 a year.
Which would be pretty disastrous for baseball. It could get even worse.
What if, as in 1994, the strike lasted into the fall and the World Series was cancelled? There seems to be at least the possibility that the United States might go to war sometime near October. For baseball, the only things worse than dead heroes, are live heroes. If America invades Iraq and Major League Baseball is on strike, it really might be the end.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
