In-Class Column Exercise: The Inevitability of the Baseball's 1994 Work Stoppage

What do you do in the case of an age-old argument where neither side has ever been willing to truly compromise and an entire industry is on the verge of a flop?

You stop working. At least that's what happened in baseball in 1994.

When the big-shot players and uber rich club owners hang everyone else out to dry, the bomb will drop. This is why the work stoppage of 1994 in baseball was inevitable.

Baseball was in a deadly state; small club owners weren't breaking even, while big club owners continued to rake in the cash. There was little authority, seeing as there was no commissioner and plans to find a new head-honcho had been dragging along. Free-agent players were asking for more and more money that many clubs didn't have, and yet they continued to be signed.

The game was no longer about the fans or the love. It was about the green goblin: cold, hard cash. Even Hall-of-Fame players noticed.

"For all the players have gained, the changes took something away from baseball," former Phillies pitcher Robin Roberts said, noting the union's role in the downfall.

The tug-of-war between small club owners and big club owners over revenue-sharing was a major issue that led to the stoppage. The small-city teams were aching for money, many having to cut talent in order to keep from selling teams to bigger cities. The San Diego Padres traded starting-pitcher Craig Lefferts and other key (but expensive) players from its roster in order to keep from going bankrupt or losing its team to another city.

But big-city teams didn't want to share the wealth. The owners didn't think it would be fair to give a large sum of money to a small-city team when they were the ones drawing in the cash.

Salary-capping was another contested issue. The players wouldn't have been happy with having their salaries cut because they didn't fit the budget, but the owners would have recieved some economic security by guaranteeing that the players salaries didn't grow exponentially every year.

One might argue that an essential break-down of the MLB's economic system would have stopped the stoppage. If everyone could have given a little, the game could have continued. If the big teams gave a percentage of revenues to small teams... If the players salaries were lowered, but they were offered other benefits and guarantees...

But there was a history behind the system. It had been broken in the past, and nobody was willing to budge.

Lords of the Realm author John Helyar put it well by comparing the players to the pigs from Animal Farm. They had been struggling to reform a system that kept them down, as the players had in the earlier days when Marvin Miller struggled with the owners to raise the minimum salary for players. But after a while, the players let it get to their heads and wanted more more more money, and pretty soon they appeared as greedy and indistinguishable from the Lords as the pigs were from the humans they struggled against. And what pig would want to go back to living in a mud-filled pen?

The small teams couldn't fiscally afford decent players, but without decent players, they couldn't make money. The big teams wouldn't give them money because they didn't think they deserved it, some arguing that certain small-teams had been poorly managed.

At the same time, there was noone to rule over the league. After Fay Vincent resigned as commissioner in 1992, no commissioner had been instated. It was in a state of political chaos, as Henry J. Aaron of the Economic Study Committee put it in his report in 1992.

So what else could baseball have done to prevent the stoppage besides going back in time to repair its torn roots?

Everything looks different in hindsight.