The knee-jerk response: The Major League Baseball Players Association lost its last hope of getting the labor portion of baseball's antitrust exemption removed when the Republicans took control of Congress. After all, Republicans always side with management.
Reality: The players' desire to retain certain freedoms stand closer to Republican principles than do the desires of owners, who want to impose a socialistic salary cap aimed at controlling wages and curbing competitive imbalance.
It's not as if Republicans have a difficult time relating to ballplayers, who reached an average salary of $1.2 million in 1994. Spend the rest of your holiday weekend trying to picture a more prototypical Republican human being than Orel Hershiser if you like, but you will be wasting your time because you won't come up with one.
Plus, don't discount the public relations gains the new Congress stands to make if it has a hand in ending the national pastime's longest work stoppage.
The prediction here is that if no settlement is reached by spring training, the new Congress will repeal the labor portion of the antitrust exemption, the players will go back to work, and a settlement will be hammered out.
What will the removal of the exemption mean to the players? It will mean they can take the owners to court over labor practices that are in violation of antitrust laws; a salary cap would fall into that category. The owners, fearing a loss in court and realizing that the players would receive treble damages (a jury decides the penalty and the judge multiplies it by three), would lighten up on their demands, and agree to a settlement.
The terms of the agreement? Call it the Little Italy Pact, discussed over pasta and chicken two months ago by Donald Fehr and Peter Angelos in Little Italy. Players pay a 3 percent tax on wages, which puts $30 million in a kitty. Owners devise a plan to raise $70 million through revenue sharing. The $100 million is put into a fund to be divided by small-market clubs.
The snag? How will Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig figure out a way to keep Angelos from getting any credit for the settlement? Selig made millions selling cars. Fear not, he'll find a way to make the author of the solution seem like the problem.
Freedom and fairness
Intent on cramming a salary cap or reasonable facsimile down the players' throats, the owners have missed their best chance to forge an agreement that would serve them much better than the current one.
Total, immediate free agency for every player with one day of major-league experience. It's the fairest, most freedom-based system possible. And it would save the owners millions.
Under such a system, a losing pitcher such as Bobby Witt would not earn more than a winner such as Mike Mussina. The best players would receive the best paychecks, regardless of service time. The market would be flooded with free agents, thus preventing a situation whereby demand outweighs supply (which is the case every year with free-agent pitchers) to the point free agents are overpaid.
Agents, seeking to get the best deals for players and best commissions for themselves, use those overpaid free agents for PTC comparison models in salary arbitration, so that now not only do six-year service time players become overpaid, but three-, four-, and five- do as well.
Under the immediate free-agency plan, more clubs would do what the trend-setting Cleveland Indians' front office has done. They would do a better job of evaluating the talent in their organizations and lock up the best players with long-term contracts.
If such a system would save owners money, why would the players want to accept it? They wouldn't want to accept it, but it would be a public relations disaster to reject it.
The players could not reject total, immediate free agency without looking totally selfish. They could not claim the system is unfair. Instead, they would say they want to retain what they have
fought for, an argument that wouldn't wash with the public. No, they would have to settle for fairness. If only the owners had the wisdom and guts to call for it.
Commissioner Cuomo
Retiring Senate majority leader George Mitchell is considered the favorite to become baseball's next commissioner. Right idea, wrong politician.
Outgoing New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, defeated for re-election by George Pataki, would be just the politician baseball needs to soothe angry fans once baseball resumes.
Cuomo, an accomplished baseball player in his youth, is a great orator, has a sincere love of the game and enjoys getting out among the people.
Ever heard a Cuomo speech on the radio? Nothing like it. Make his hiring effective at the brokering of a labor settlement. Let Cuomo announce the end of the work stoppage on radio first, then on television.
He would take the job without waffling because he remembers what happened the last time he waffled. He could have been
president. Instead, he is a defeated governor.