MLB strike of 1994

After baseball finished it's transformation from a game into a business, it died.

Over a century in the making, the strike of 1994 was unavoidable.

From an "owners vs. players," point of view, much of baseball's history had been an uneven struggle with the owners coming out on top.

In the early 1900's when baseball "boomed," onto the American scene, team owners establshed their control over players. Players had made several attempts to organize, but these attempts always failed. The MLBPA wasn't even formed until 1953.

From that point on, there had been constant, drawn out battles between player representitives and owners, regarding issues like the collective barganing agreement (finalized in 1968) and eliminating the reserve clause in 1975, opening the door to free agencey.

As each year went by and the owners lost their grip on power over the players, the harder they tried to squeeze. As players gained more independence, more money left the pockets of the owners. The players became wealthier and there was no way they would allow any revisions to lose the ground they had gained.

With each arrbitration case, with each free agent signing more expensive than the last, and player salaires exponentially increasing, the burner had been lit and it was only a matter of time before the water began boiling over.

In my opinion, the strike of 94 became a runaway train in 1985 after the owners were found guilty of collusion. Any resemblence of trust between the owners and the MLBPA was gone after that. It was already an established belief for the players that owners would do anything to pay as little as possible, and collusion cemented this belief.

There was also the issue of owners bickering amongst themselves. Big-market vs. small-market teams and the issue of revenue sharing was something that bitterly divided owners. Even when middle-market teams held a secret meeting and produced a plan that might have been able to appeal to both ends of the spectrum, this was shot down.

Throw in the nuggets that players still wouldn't not agree to a salary cap and at the time baseball had no commissioner; how could there not have been a strike?

One might say, "Why wouldn't the players agree to a salary cap? Every other major professinal sport has one."

Baseball players had been paying attention to the salary caps of other leagues, and did not like what they saw. In 1990, the NBA players union had been negotiating a new contract and were trying to eliminate their cap. 10 years in existence, "players found little market for their services," due to payroll limits. The NFL had implemented a salary cap that year for the first time, which resulted in many veterans taking pay cuts or being cut altogether.

Another arguement may be, "Why couldn't the players wait until after the season to strike?"

The players wanted to strike during the season for two reasons. First, it would "hurt the pocketbooks," of the owners, and more importantly because "federal labor law allowed employers to declare a bargaining impasse, after a decent interval for negotiations, and impose employment terms." They had to strike, and August 11 was the date.

Both sides of the issue, players and owners, so deeply rooted in their beliefs and distrustful of the other, could not reach an agreement and the strike of 1994 was the result.

"The players, rich beyond their wildest dreams, were nonetheless determined not to countenance "givebacks." The owners, pride wounded worse than pocketbooks, were fixated on seizing back control after twenty years."

-source Lords of the Realm by John Helyar