The baseball owners are giving the fans a cap for Christmas. Isn't that thoughtful?
Just what you always wanted under your tree: a unilaterally imposed salary cap that throws baseball into utter chaos.
What a pleasant little item to hand the baseball public two days before Christmas.
Call him Bud Selig, Commissioner Grinch.
We could be appalled by the timing if the owners hadn't already shown that they have no conscience. But once you've killed the World Series, raining on Christmas is no biggie.
Implementing their own set of work rules is a move that the owners, for all of their public bravado, obviously are worried about making. Otherwise they wouldn't have twice postponed it, pushing it into the middle of the holiday season.
Their worries are well-founded. Warning signs are beginning to blink in their faces as the strike drags on. They don't seem to care, but they might soon.
The National Labor Relations Board already has accused them of unfair labor practices stemming from their failure to make a contribution to the players' pension plan last summer. In the seven-page complaint, the NLRB also said that the owners have been "failing and refusing to bargain collectively and in good faith with the union."
Did you hear that? The NLRB says the owners aren't bargaining fairly. Period. If so, what are the chances of the owners getting their way if and when the players challenge their imposed cap in a labor court? Not good, or so it would seem.
That, friends, is a warning sign for the owners if ever there was one.
So is the news that Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is about to become head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has accused some owners of trying to break the union and said he would reintroduce legislation that would partially strip baseball of its antitrust exemption.
Remember, the union has said it would return to work without a contract if the exemption were stripped, enabling the issue to be settled in court.
Selig's reaction to Hatch's comments? He complained about the senator butting into the dispute at such a delicate moment.
Unbelievable.
Meanwhile, ESPN reported that incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich met with three players Monday and promised to work to repeal the exemption. ("At this time, I don't think Newt is going to do anything," Gingrich aide Allen Lipsett told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. "He may do something in the future.")
Promises and tough talk from politicians mean nothing, of
course, but does Commissioner Grinch think these people are just kidding around? A warning sign is a warning sign is warning sign.
The owners never have proved that their iron-clad demand for "cost certainty," some limit on player salaries, was at all merited. Meanwhile, they continue to weaken their claim of economic despair every day by signing average players such as Jay Buhner to hugely inflated contracts.
Their fundamental stance in this disagreement rests on shaky ground. Their refusal to admit it could cost them their antitrust exemption in the end.
That would hardly be a crime against humanity, of course.
Let's face it: The owners no longer deserve the exemption, which they were given in 1922 to prevent challenges to their existence from rival leagues. But 70-some years later, it's pure balder-- to suggest that the public isn't suffering from the owners' collusion.
Pro football, basketball and hockey don't have exemptions, and they're no different than baseball: It's all big business involving city and state governments and millions of dollars of taxpayer money (see: Camden Yards), and an antitrust exemption is simply outdated in such a competitive, hardball environment.
Of course, the fact that the owners may have backed themselves into a troublesome corner is hardly reason for joy. No matter what happens or who wins and loses, we could be looking at years of blather from lawyers. It doesn't mean the game is coming back anytime soon. That's all anyone wanted for Christmas, and, alas, it's not close to happening.