Back to work, boys. File your complaints, prepare your lawsuits, then tell the owners, "See you in spring training."
The strategy would be simple.
End the strike, not the fight.
It's the best option for the union, the one that would put its members in position to receive a paycheck, rather than force them to decide whether to cross a picket line.
It's also the option that serves the best interests of the game, not that either side would dare entertain such a ridiculous concept.
Back to work, boys -- but not right away. Let Congress do its thing, then issue a no-strike pledge in February, leaving the dispute to the National Labor Relations Board and the judicial system.
The move would expose the owners' true motive: Do they merely want a salary cap, or do they also want to bust the union?
If their response was a lockout -- a lockout with the salary cap
in place, a lockout forcing the use of replacement players -- the answer would be obvious.
The players would face enormous risks by returning to work. But at least they'd face them while collecting fat paychecks.
Of course, in this upside-down world, that would be the problem, not the solution.
The players would grow fat and happy -- yes, even under the owners' new economic system. After a while, they'd probably wonder why they ever went on strike.
For now, they'll simply take their case to the NLRB, and let the momentum build in Congress. They'll return to work anyway if baseball's antitrust exemption is lifted. That would enable them to take their fight to the courts.
Thus, it makes sense for the players to hold off as long as they can. But if Congress doesn't act by Feb. 1, they should end the strike before facing truly dire consequences.
They should sign contracts under the owners' new plan, somehow finding the ability to function in a world without salary arbitration.
And they should report to spring training, embarrassing Bud Selig and Co. in the baseball version of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
How could Donald Fehr explain himself to Marvin Miller? By promising the great union patriarch that all of his breakthroughs would be restored -- and then some -- once the dispute is resolved.
NB The NLRB score card already reads 2-0 in favor of the players,
and those were only the preliminaries. One agent said yesterday that when the board starts tackling more substantive issues, the owners are "going to get killed."
The union's final counterproposal included the secondary tax that the players initially resisted, fearing it would function like a cap. But the owners, of course, wanted nothing less than the cap itself.
Did the players leave room for good-faith bargaining? Absolutely. Did the owners ever intend to engage in such bargaining? Absolutely not.
The moment the NLRB rules for the players, the cap will be rendered illegal. Think of the owners as policemen using an invalid search warrant. Their "arrest" of the players would be deemed improper.
And that's only one front.
Even if Congress fails to act, the union might file an antitrust lawsuit against the clubs in Philadelphia, where a U.S. District judge ruled in August 1993 that baseball's antitrust exemption did not apply to franchise sales.
Two businessmen -- one the father of Dodgers catcher Mike Piazza -- accused the owners of violating antitrust rules by conspiring to exclude them from a deal to buy the San Francisco Giants and move them to St. Petersburg, Fla.
The result?
A $6 million settlement and a formal apology from baseball.
The relevance?
A crack in baseball's antitrust armor.
If it happened once, it can happen again. Some legal experts believe that the Curt Flood verdict in 1972 showed that player restraints like the salary cap are exempt from antitrust law. The judge in the Piazza case said the exemption applies only to the now-defunct reserve clause.
Of course, these arguments won't even be necessary if Congress repeals the labor portion of the antitrust exemption. Then, the dispute would be settled with help from the courts -- the same thing that happened in the NFL, and probably will happen in the NBA.
That remains Fehr's best hope, but who in his right mind would rely on Congress? A bill to modify the exemption was approved by the House Judiciary Committee in September, but never reached a vote in either chamber.
The players are staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, and the owners are starting to fire real bullets. They implemented the salary cap. They're planning to use replacement players. They'll stop at nothing.
Back to work, boys. Your union might not survive any other way.