Details, details

Baseball labor deal not just about luxury tax

Try as we might, it’s tough putting aside the baseball labor news. A week after the two sides averted a strike by hammering out a four-year a deal -- which the owners ratified Thursday -- interesting bits and pieces continue to slip out, such as the likelihood of a worldwide amateur draft.

According to a union official, the parties agreed to the concept of a worldwide draft just before the strike deadline, as well as the outline for a system to monitor whether the so-called small market clubs properly reinvest luxury tax revenue to improve the franchise. And with contraction out of the picture, the owners also must decide where to relocate the Montreal Expos.

“One clear indication that they really wanted a deal is when they agreed to put some of these things on hold,’’ the official says. “Because when we returned to them [Friday morning], it was clear there were a number of difficult issues and there was no way to work them out in the time frame we had.’’

Under the agreement, the commissioner’s office will be set up as the watchdog to ensure that owners put luxury tax and local revenue sharing funds back into their clubs. The process is still vague and has yet to be put in writing, but clubs will have to prove that the money is going into something to improve the franchise, such as player development or stadium projects.

The issue of the amateur draft may take two or three months to finalize, and there’s a 50-50 chance the new system won’t be in place this spring.

Currently, the draft includes only players from North America and Puerto Rico. Some owners had complained about the New York Yankees and others using their resources to outbid rivals for top prospects in the Dominican Republic, even though the Expos are a small-market club that has developed a significant amount of foreign talent.

In theory, at least, a good number of foreign players who would otherwise be signed as free agents will now be subject to the draft. This still leaves multiple issues to be ironed out, such as age requirements and what becomes of the training camps many teams in recent years have developed to recruit and train Dominican prospects.

As a condition for broadening the draft, the owners apparently agreed to considerably reduce the number of rounds, perhaps to as few as 25.

And now to today’s mailbag, which runs the gamut from additional reflections on the labor settlement to ex-union boss Marvin Miller’s worthiness for Cooperstown to thoughts on paying college athletes.

I feel like the fans were pawns in a very well-scripted work that Vince McMahon would be proud of. Greedy players who didn't want to miss a paycheck threatening to strike, owners who are making money [for the most part] with banks demanding interest payments and a white knight [Bud Selig] who saves the day at the very last minute.
-- Jim B., Ventura, Calif.

Hopefully this deal has a longer life than Mr. McMahon’s foray into the world of pro football. Good point about the commissioner’s 11th-hour appearance. I have one simple question: If baseball is headquartered in New York and that was also home to the negotiations, why was Bud Selig holed up in his Milwaukee office? The most disappointing thing, if true, is the union claims the two sides were probably a month away from a deal when Selig broke off negotiations in June 2001. The parties had 23 meetings between February and June of that year, and the union maintains the present deal resembles what could have been reached last summer. If that’s the case, blame the owners for putting the game and its fans through hell.

Why don’t they just call it Enronball? These multimillionaires are sticking it to the normal folk so they can stuff their own pockets. I mean, goodness knows that these poor players and owners NEED their third vacation house, and everyone should just shut up and deal with it the way Enron employees and retirees did.
-- Rebecca Berry, Booneville, Iowa

Hey, haven’t you heard? The price of beachfront property has gone through the roof.

Baseball has expanded way too much. Let’s face it, half the teams don’t represent a "big league city" and belong in a new minor league. Eight teams per league and the league would be healthy.
-- Bill Bergmann, Los Angeles

Hold on a second, Bill. I’m all for putting, say, four teams out of business [Tampa Bay, Montreal, Florida, Kansas City], but an eight-team league is a little drastic. And go tell the Chamber of Commerce in places like Baltimore, Cincinnati and Detroit that they’re not “big-league’’ cities.

When a person playing a game makes more than the president of the United States, then the whole thing stinks. Baseball was and is supposed to be for the children. When parents can’t afford to bring their kids to the ballpark, then the whole thing stinks. I read a summary of the agreement, and all I got out of it was that now guys who make more in one year than I do in five (and that's the minimum salary players) will now get medical benefits. I guess it was too much to ask that they pay a lousy $500 for their own medical. I guess it was too much to ask for someone making $300,000 a year. The players stink. The owners stink. The game now stinks. I think I’ll stick to something else.
-- Jim Cosentino, Carmichael, Calif.

OK, let’s lay the blame on President Bush. If he’d only held the line on salaries when he was running the Texas Rangers, the White House wouldn’t look like a cottage to some of these high-rent characters.

Where's Al Kaline when you need him? When offered $100,000 by the Detroit Tigers, he turned it down. Not because it wasn't enough, but because it was TOO much. Can you see the greedy, self-serving players of today doing that! No way! The game of baseball has been entrusted to a group who has no respect for the history, traditions, and honor of those who paved the way for them, nor for the people who ultimately pay their salaries -- the fans. Or, in my case, ex-fans.
-- Patrick S. Coons, Floyds Knobs, Ind.

Sorry, but it’s a new day and baseball, as the owners like to say, is an industry. I can tell you, Al Kaline is a prince of a man. But if he were playing today, he’d hire himself an agent and probably negotiate for every million he could get.

Marvin Miller does not belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The reason that he was able to make such an inroad into the game was due to the stupidity and cowardice of the men who owned the teams in the mid-1970s. They totally caved in and, in the words of the late Paul Richards, then GM of the Atlanta Braves, "gave our game away to the players union." Miller, whose facial features, fittingly, closely resemble those of a rat, spent his entire working lifetime walking around with a large chip on his shoulder, and he continues to do so today.
-- Rusty Gunner, New York

No sense trying to enlist you for the campaign. But stew on this, if you will. Why is it a number of the same executives and owners who supposedly turned the game over to the union -- I guess you could say Mr. Miller outsmarted them -- can be found enshrined in Cooperstown?

At what point did the first academic institution say to an 18-year-old kid, “You have no academic aptitude for a college degree, you had a terrible college entrance score, but you are one heck of an athlete and you can come to our college for free”? I think getting rid of all athletic scholarships would be great for the schools and the athletes. Then you could get rid of about half the NCAA regulations and regulators. Athletes are going to try harder academically if they have to pay their own way.
-- Eric, Kansas City, Mo.

Probably the first time Princeton lost to Rutgers. No, seriously, eliminating athletic scholarships is an idea worth debating. But big-time college sports are so far down the road that there’s likely no turning back.

I attended UCLA on a "full-ride" in the late '70s/early '80s. I could barely support myself with the minimal funds that were issued to me for grant-in-aid. The NCAA to this day issues checks to collegiate athletes that hardly reach the amount needed to have any kind of extra cash for clothing, extra food, or any type of social life.
-- Mike Mason, St. Louis

I’m not normally big on the thought of paying college athletes. Now, I’m headed in that direction after seeing the billions the NCAA and its member colleges divvy from football and basketball.

I attend a Division I university, where it seems that more and more of the general education requirements are better suited to high school freshmen, and more importantly to our football and basketball players. Don't get me wrong, there are some Division I players nationwide who pursue meaningful degrees and become valuable members of society in a capacity other than entertainers. However, what bothers me the most is not dumbed-down classes, but the money that the university throws away on these guys. Division I schools nationwide give away millions of dollars each semester in scholarships. Most of that money does not go to medical students, education majors, architects or fine arts students. Rather, it goes to men who can throw a ball. My tuition goes up each year so the university can give out more athletics scholarships, build more practice fields, buy new jerseys, and hire more professors to teach kindergarten.
-- William S., University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

Sounds like you're touching upon the hypocrisy in this student-athlete business. Wouldn’t it be nice if a voice of authority, like the NCAA president, stood up and acknowledged that our colleges have taken their games to the professional level?

Thanks for the words and the biased conclusions presented in the Knight report. I suggest to them that if they wish to escape the increasing cost of remaining nationally competitive in major college sports, there is always an option. I suggest they apply for admission to the Ivy League -- great scholarship, a de-emphasis on athletics and very few scandals. But please don’t try and force that infant-like, pabulum-type of program on the rest of us who are apparently considerably more competitive than the two ex-presidents of institutions with recently disappointing football programs.
-- Bob Johnson, Oregon State

Calling all NCAA investigators: Immediately abandon your trail in the SEC and head for the woods of Corvallis. Go, Beavers!

To put it bluntly, [Father Theodore] Hesburgh and [William] Friday are both dumb and blind. It's simple economics; the more your product is made available to the viewing public, the more they can and will watch. The more cash that comes in from various sources, the better college sports have become. Graduation rates? Don't we put these kids through enough hardships? Why require them to do one more thing that the rest of the student body doesn't? And don't get me started on the gambling issue. Gambling probably gives the NCAA at least half of its viewers, and therefore half the money. If you're afraid of games being fixed, then enforce those laws. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
-- Jack Kitchen, Munroe Falls, Ohio

O.K guys, no more classes, no more tests . . . and let’s find us a bookie.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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