Hysteria rules

As strike talk looms over the game, histrionics replace hope

Everybody needs to relax. Everybody just needs to back up a little bit right now and take a big, deep breath. Chill.

We have about two weeks. It's not a lot of time. It's not a lot of time at all. But it's enough time. So get hold of yourselves.

Friday, Major League Baseball players decided to go ahead and schedule a strike -- Aug. 30, for those of you scoring at home -- and hysteria broke out all over the nation. Owners and players, fans and media members all started freaking out. Rhetoric bounced around like an old resin bag. Sound bites fell like a Miami rain.

It was a top story on the nightly newscasts, right there with Iraq and the economy. In New York, some owners and their representatives went glumly before the TV cameras. "Regrettable," is what Chicago Cubs chief executive officer Andy MacPhail called the players' decision.

In Minneapolis, Denny Hocking, the Twins' representative to the union, talked about going through with the threat. "We're not bragging by any means," he said, "but you have to be willing to go all the way to get what you deserve."

In Chicago, where the Arizona Diamondbacks played the Cubs, Arizona's Mark Grace blamed owners. "If nothing gets done," he said, "I think that means owners don't want to get something done."

In Arlington, Texas, Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez talked about the good of a strike. "If you can suffer a little pain to make the game better," he said, "that's what we have to do."

Down the road in Crawford, Texas, former team owner and current Commander in Chief George Bush said he'd be "furious" if the players go on strike.

Over in Houston, a group called the Baseball Fan Union (baseballfanunion.com) called for fans to stand in a silent protest during the third inning of next Friday's games and to forego the peanuts, popcorn and Cracker Jack at the ballpark, too.

From Toronto, fading fan Duff Wallis e-mailed to say "Much like the Titanic, it's full steam ahead into the iceberg, with the rich guys on the foredeck arguing over who's more unsinkable."

Whew. Good thing the players didn't actually walk off the job Friday afternoon.

Make no mistake: On Aug. 30, the players will walk. If there's no coming to terms on the main issue that separates the owners and players, the payroll tax, it's bye-bye baseball. For how long, no one knows.

But the owners and players have about two pressure-filled weeks of hardball negotiations before that. Two weeks to try to save each other from looking like a bunch of total idiots. Total idiot millionaires.

Can they do it? Yes. Will they do it? No one knows. First they have to get through the next couple of days.

In Atlanta, the player representative to the National League, Tom Glavine, stood in the Braves dugout a few hours before Friday's game in front of dozens of cameras and recorders and notebooks and said what he has been saying for months. For years. Ever since he went through this in '94, in fact.

Friday was a day Glavine saw coming a long time ago. It was a kind of necessary evil. He knew that as soon as the strike date was established, things would turn ugly. For a while anyway.

"I think," he said, "we're pretty well embroiled in that now."

But not for long. Another 24 hours, another 48, and the two sides will get cracking on the payroll tax. The rhetoric will subside. The sound bites will fall to a trickle. The owners' lawyers and the players' lawyers will work long into the night.

This is how it always goes. The owners and players talk and threaten, then they don't talk and they threaten some more until, finally, a strike is scheduled. Hysteria follows. And then comes their final chance to get things right.

Friday was filled with posturing and head shaking and a whole lot of fear about what is next for the national pastime. It was not baseball's finest day. Not by a long, long shot.

But if it's any consolation, it was still a couple of weeks or so from being its worst.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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