Orel Hershiser, Cecil Fielder, Don Fehr, Tom Glavine, David Cone (Don Emmert /AFP/Getty Images) There was at least a two-year preparation, financially, leading up to it. Probably ’93 spring training, we started having meetings. To Don and Gene’s credit and the rest of the staff, they’d been through it. Tom Glavine, pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, player representative for the National League: Honestly, the preparation for ’94 was going on for a while.
1994 MLB STRIKE INTERVIEW FREE
It was all an effort to curtail free agency so the owners could keep more of the money. Then there was collusion, then there was the 1990 lockout, and then there was 1994-95. In ’81 there was a long strike in an effort to blunt it. In ’76, they locked the players out in an effort to blunt it. “Not my problem,” that was the attitude.ĭon Fehr, MLBPA executive director: The owners don’t like free agency because they lose control over players and it costs them more money because they have to pay something into the player’s market value.
I knew how bad things were for the industry. Now, when those lines cross - where you’re losing less money during a strike - that is a powerful motivator to take a strike and fix the problem. Many teams lost less money when they weren’t playing games. Because they always cave.’” And I do believe that was the truth. Orel has since told me, “Look, here’s what we were told: ‘If we just hang on and do nothing, the owners are going to cave.
And this was a last-gasp (effort) to put anything off. Stan Kasten, president of the Atlanta Braves: Right before the bitter end and the strike began, I was locked in a room, me and ( Red Sox CEO) John Harrington on a Saturday morning with Orel Hershiser and Lauren Rich. And was here the night the strike started.
At that time, I still lived in Washington and I had been here for most of the summer, every day. I was at 350 Park, which is where baseball’s offices were. But day-to-day, I was the person that dealt with baseball as a client. One of the senior partners from the firm was still involved, Chuck O’Connor. Rob Manfred, then outside counsel to Major League Baseball at the firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius: I was responsible for working on the revenue sharing plan, most of the big economic pieces in the deal. So too did revenue sharing, as well as labor lessons that have resonated ever since. Don Fehr, Gene Orza, Lauren Rich and Michael Weiner were amongst a group of lawyers who had won time and again.Īfter a 232-day strike, and more than a year of additional negotiation once it ended, a luxury tax - but not a salary cap - arrived.
Founder Marvin Miller was retired, but still a resource. The players, meanwhile, were represented by a union that had been through seven work stoppages previously, with abundant institutional recall and, most of all, fortitude. Ownership was seeking monumental changes: a salary cap, as well as revenue sharing. Bud Selig, the acting commissioner since 1992, was in power and gaining more, aided by Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox and others - leaving the league’s lead negotiator, Richard Ravitch, to flounder. Big markets and small markets were tearing each other apart.Įven worse, perhaps, for the owners had been their poorly defined front. 12, 1994, baseball owners had long been plagued by infighting. When the game’s last work stoppage began on Aug. A work stoppage happens when there is no other recourse.” The endgame is to find a fair deal at the bargaining table. “You don’t look forward to a work stoppage,” union head Tony Clark said.
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