Bud to the rescue

If you're after a winner in all this, look right to the top

They'll tell you there are no winners and losers in this. They'll tell you it's a compromise. Everybody gives a little in a compromise. Everybody gets a little something.

But you know what? Bud Selig is a winner. Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner whom everybody loves to hate, cleans up in this thing.

How's that for an upset?

Major League Baseball sidestepped what would have been a disastrous players' strike on Friday when the players' union and team owners came together on a collective bargaining agreement that will provide the game with labor peace -- or a facsimile of it, anyway -- for the next four years.

It took months and months to get to this point. Years, really. It took an all-nighter Thursday that would have made a slacker college freshman proud.

But the agreement finally was reached late Friday morning. Baseball will go on without missing a game. Never before have the two sides come to a new labor agreement without a game being missed.

"This was a day many people never thought would happen," Selig said at an early afternoon news conference in New York. "And there were a lot of moments that there was a lot of justification for that."

So, baseball goes on. And when we look back on this, in the box score in this high-stakes game of labor one-upmanship, there will be a big "W" next to Selig's name.

Oh, there were others who helped broker this baby, the lawyers and negotiators who did the heavy lifting. Rob Manfred and Bob DuPuy on the owners' side, Gene Orza and Michael Weiner for the players. Many, many more.

But Selig, the commissioner on watch during the devastating players strike of 1994, comes away from this embarrassing near disaster looking better than anyone. His side won.

Yeah, the winners-losers thing is a little too easy. Sure, there were compromises. Selig did not get everything he wanted for the owners.

But the owners will have the luxury tax on the too-bloated payrolls that they so badly wanted, a much greater tax than they had in the past deal. They will have increased revenue sharing. They will have drug testing for the players.

They will not get contraction. Not in the four years of this deal. But in 2007, as part of this deal, they can pursue the elimination of teams without objection from the union.

What it all means is that, through the end of 2006, baseball's economic game will now be played more by the owners' rules than it has been in the last 30 years. More than $250 million a year will change hands from the richer teams to the poorer ones in this new agreement because of the increased sharing of revenues and the payroll tax.

Owners hope those changes will result in a more competitive league because the recipients of that money will be able to spend more on players. The owners also hope it keeps the players' salaries from expanding as quickly as they have in the past.

Whether it ultimately works that way is another matter.

"The issue here was competitive balance," Selig said. "I feel this deal clearly deals with that."

Selig has acted as the game's head buffoon for so long. Much of the criticism -- including, most recently, on his decision to declare the All-Star Game a tie -- has been unfair.

But Selig, charged with the almost impossible task of getting 30 high-ego owners pointing toward the same goal, finally saw in these negotiations something he never had seen. He saw a players' union that, rightly, did not want to strike.

The players made concessions that they never before have made, that they never before would think of considering. But given the economy, given the damage that could have come to the game with another work stoppage like the one in '94, the players were willing to make those concessions.

They may end up regretting it when this agreement expires. But for now, they're content.

"We believe this is an agreement we can live with," union boss Don Fehr said at the news conference with Selig. "Otherwise, we would not have made it."

All is not peachy now. All is not wonderful. Baseball has taken a tremendous public relations hit in the endless headlines and sound bites in this fight between millionaire players and owners. If baseball thinks that just by coming to an agreement without the loss of any games that all is forgiven … well, forget it.

Now is the time for baseball to reach out. Players, often seen as aloof and spoiled, need to get more involved with the fans. Owners somehow have to make the game more affordable. The entire ballpark experience -- from the price of concessions to the increasing noise to the length of the games -- has to be re-evaluated.

There is a lot of work ahead for baseball. But, at least now, baseball can turn its attention to the game and how to make it more enjoyable.

You can thank Bud Selig for that.

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

 

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