Sweet Merciful Crap, They Didn't Strike
I am, quite frankly, stunned. Major League Baseball's players and owners actually had the combined foresight and intelligence necessary to continue playing baseball and making millions of dollars. Most amazingly, it looks as though the player's union actually backed down and made considerable concessions to the owners. The fact that the players would avert the strike in this situation is really unprecedented, because the players have been beating the living crap out of the owners at the bargaining table since the beginning of free agency.
Of note, as best I can tell:
1) Revenue sharing increases from 20% of annual revenue per team to 34%. That will lead to a lot bigger pool for middle to small market teams to draw on.
2) Luxury taxes are levied on teams whose total player salaries exceed a set amount ($117 million in 2003, 120.5 million in 2004, etc.). This will discourage the big market teams from big spending and help limit the highest player's salaries to the merely ridiculous.
3) Mandatory, random steroid testing.
4) No teams will be eliminated through the 2006 season.
1) and 2) will have similar effects, in that they are both two tools to take from baseball's rich and give to baseball's poor. Both will take a lot from both big salary teams and, indirectly, from many big salary players. 3) was the easy one for this round. Neither the players or the owners really wants steroid testing, but they also have little choice (it's amazing that baseball avoided steroid testing for so long anyway!) 4) is the fan favorite, the part that everyone can understand: don't take away the Twins, or the A's, fer crissakes. I don't believe that was ever really a solution, it was just the owners pathetic way of crying out to the public.
This agreement, believe it or not, is most of of what baseball really needed to do to guarantee owners, players, and fans a future (albeit short term) for baseball. I really can't say enough how surprised I am that they didn't screw this thing up again. I'm not really sure why the player's union decided to do the right thing, because they have had and will continue to have the upper hand against the owners. But they did the right thing, both for themselves and for baseball. Sweet merciful crap, I really can't believe it.
[For more details on the points of the agreement, see Jayson Stark's ESPN Article -Mojo]
Posted by Commander Cornflake at August 30, 2002 05:59 PM
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This is good news. I don't any of the fundamental problems with baseball have been solved, but it should keep the system stable for a few more years, and I think that's all anyone can hope for.
The Twins and Angles stay in till at least '06, which is great as far as I'm concerned, but we'll also have Montreal and Tampa bay around for 3 more seasons, which I don't see as being that great. Oh well, the new deal shouldn't prevent teams from moving to new markets, of which I'm sure there are several good spots for new teams to move (DC or Portland could probably both support a team).
I still think ol' Bud Selig should be publicly eviscerated, but I do tend to hold a grudge(and I still blame him for moving the Pilots to Minneapolis in the early 70's, among all his later vile transgressions).
