The Bad News

Labor negotiations do as much for an alienated fan's interest in baseball as Jaws did for bodysurfing. Is it safe to go back into the water? Not without waiting one hour after eating and reading this warning sign: After three months of stone silence that followed nine months of name-calling, litigation, a kiss-off of the President of the United States and the mockery of replacement baseball, the negotiations between major league owners and players are about to get more difficult.

"Ab-so-lutely," says emphatic Atlanta Brave president Stan Kasten. "Now more than ever."

Should the owners finally get around to reopening talks shortly after the All-Star break (what we need is someone to tell them to quit dawdling and get back in the batter's box), they plan to ask for a tighter choke on salaries than they did in March, when the two sides last met. "A lot of teams are digging in more and more as this goes on," Kasten says. "The economics have changed too much since March." The essence of that new economics: Attendance is running 20% behind last year's.

One group of owners, led by Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, actually is pushing to put the salary cap back on the table. Even a self-described optimist like John Harrington, the Boston Red Sox general partner and captain of the owners' negotiating team, can only hope to get a deal done "maybe by Thanksgiving or into December."

"It is scary," says San Francisco Giant president Peter Magowan. "On the other hand, the players ought to be able to see it: The revenue isn't there anymore."

The danger is that the second half of the 1995 season, promising as it may be on the field, would be poisoned by a rerun of the dueling press conferences and finger-pointing by both sides on the nightly news. "If we go back and make the same mistakes of the past," says Texas Ranger president Tom Schieffer, "if negotiations start again and become acrimonious again, it will kill us. It will turn the fans' focus back toward the negotiations and away from baseball."

Both sides understand this much: The 1995 season must be played out through the World Series without a work stoppage, and a long-term agreement is the most essential element to winning back fans. "We have to let them know there will be uninterrupted baseball for several years," says outfielder Darren Lewis of the Giants. "We need that to get them emotionally involved again."

However, the attempt to get such a deal, if it is not conducted with speed and decorum, could turn off many fans for good. "It worries me not knowing who's in charge on the owners' side," says New York Yankee pitcher Jack McDowell. "If Jerry Reinsdorf is still in charge and people are still following him after he led them down a dead end, then we're all in trouble. If we don't get a deal by the time we go into the off-season, it's going to be a mess again."

Trouble is, as Philadelphia Phillie president Bill Giles says, "we don't know what we want to negotiate." Milwaukee Brewer owner-replacement commissioner Bud Selig, who has done more for long-distance service than Candace Bergen, once could brag of coaxing the 27 other owners into his own tight little calling circle. But that solidarity began to break apart on March 31 when U.S. district court judge Sonia Sotomayor granted an injunction against the owners, restoring terms of the old collective bargaining agreement and putting the players back on the field.

The owners have split into three groups: the hard-liners, who want a salary cap more than ever now that they are suffering through another year of the old system—and this time with vastly reduced revenues; the moderates, who would consider a one- or two-year rollover deal while trying to negotiate a drag of some sort on salaries; and the doves, who are ready to sign just about anything. Some of those doves, all of whom hail from big-money markets, want Selig and his small-revenue agenda out of the way.