SARASOTA, Fla. — Spring training isn't the same this year because nobody knows if spring training will be around next year. Baseball could be on the verge of another work stoppage.

Barry Larkin signs autographs. (Jeff Swinger photo) | ZOOM |

        “You think about it,” said Reds reliever Danny Graves, “because it's what everybody talks about and it's what the Players Association has been preparing us for.”

        Baseball's labor agreement expires Oct. 31, following the World Series, prompting fear of the sport's third work stoppage in 11 years and the ninth since 1971.

        “Anybody who says there's no possibility of (a work stoppage) is in a bit of a dream world,” said Reds pitcher Pete Harnisch.

        History dictates that baseball will be disrupted in some way. The last eight labor talks were accompanied by a players' strike or an owners' lockout, ranging from the two-day strike of 1985 to the last work stoppage, which cut short a potentially record 1994 season, cut out the World Series and turned the 1995 spring into a haven for replacement players before a new deal was signed.

LABOR ISSUES

Baseball's richest teams, such as the New York Yankees — who have won three of the last four World Series — might be reluctant to allow a system that would ease the economic imbalance between high- and low-revenue franchises.         But most baseball executives agree that something must be done to bridge at least part of the gap between the haves and have-nots. This can't be done without the players' cooperation, because they're part of the Basic Agreement that binds the sport's labor and management.         Key issues include:         • Slowing the growth in player salaries, which are expected to exceed an average of $2 million this year (1995 average: $1.1 million).         • Instituting revenue sharing that extends beyond the current form — dividing national television contracts and the “tax” levied against teams with the highest payrolls.         • Instituting a “competitive balance” draft that would allow the worst teams to select players from better teams.

        Phil Hughes of Cincinnati, a Reds season-ticket holder since 1974 who was watching the team's minor-league workouts Tuesday, hasn't forgotten.

        “It's extremely frustrating.” he said. “I don't understand why anything requires or would result in a lockout or a strike. It's inconceivable to me that people who make their entire income — the club and players — basically from the fans, feel it necessary to penalize the fans with a lockout or a strike to settle their differences.

        “I'm not a union supporter. Nor am I a vindictive ownership supporter. They're both acting like children, and as far as I'm concerned, if they go through with this, they need to be treated that way.”

        Some fans never returned after the last work stoppage. Some came back slowly. In Cincinnati, the birthplace of professional baseball, the Reds couldn't even sell out two home games for the 1995 National League Championship Series. Only the final days of a surprising 96-win 1999 season and then the 2000 homecoming of outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. convinced fans to return.

        St. Louis Cardinals megastar Mark McGwire, whose 70 home runs in 1998 shattered Roger Maris' record 61 — a mark that Griffey among others were challenging in 1994 before the season stopped — has talked of possibly retiring if another work stoppage occurs. Reds second baseman Pokey Reese fears that a number of fans might follow him out the door.

        “They'd be gone,” he said. “I'm sure of that.”

        Said Reds catcher Kelly Stinnett, “You wouldn't expect them to (recover). You have some loyalists out there who like baseball. But it's like any kind of relationship. You get hurt once, you don't want to get hurt twice.”

        Said Hughes, “We almost walked away from baseball the last time. We continued with some bitterness. And if it happens again, I think we'll totally walk away from it.”

        Like players, many fans watching training-camp workouts have tried to divert their attention from the developing labor conflict. After all, this is spring, when optimism is supposed to dominate.

        “I won't get robbed of the magic of spring training and the new sense of hope it brings,” said Bob Campbell of Templeton, Calif. “It (baseball labor) only frustrates or bothers me when I think about it. Then I quickly let it go.”

        Reese prefers to focus on Opening Day.

        “I'm not getting stressed out over it,” he said. “Come on; it (baseball) is starting to get fun now.”

        But ignoring the labor issue when it looms so large, albeit at a distance, is not easy.

        There is widespread speculation that team owners will impose a lockout effective Nov. 1, preventing players on the 40-man rosters of each major-league organization from using team facilities. If that stretches to February 2002, spring training could be a casualty and, eventually, part or all of the season.

        Owners don't want to operate another year under the current conditions. They want to find a way to stop the rapid escalation in salaries, which included a record $252 million, 10-year contract for free-agent shortstop Alex Rodriguez with the Texas Rangers in December. The average player is expected to earn more than $2 million this year.

        A widening disparity between big- and small-market teams has the owners considering greater revenue sharing. There has been talk of extending the “luxury tax,” which forces the biggest spenders among the owners to pay limited amounts to the have-nots. Instead of dividing only national television deals, local media revenues might be shared in some way, as well. A “competitive balance” draft that would allow the worst teams to select players from better teams also could be instituted.

        Commissioner Bud Selig's mission will be to convince large-market owners that further helping small-market owners will help the game. Convincing players to give up some of their rights for the greater good won't be easy, either.

        Though the Major League Baseball Players Association remains the most powerful union in professional sports and one of the strongest in organized labor, it's believed the players won't strike as they did to begin the last work stoppage during the 1994 season. Then, it was a pre-emptive strike because they feared owners would try to institute a salary cap after the season. Now, the players realize the potential negative backlash from the fans, and the union is happy with the current setup, which includes provisions for salary arbitration, free agency and no salary cap.

        Already, the chance of receiving no income in 2002 has prompted some players to focus more on saving money rather than spending it, though even the minimum salary of $200,000 seems lavish to most fans.

        One such Red is Stinnett, who signed a one-year, $500,000 contract as a free agent in January.

        “I told my wife that we need to prepare for the possibility there might be no work,” he said. “We're preparing right now. No unnecessary buying, cutting back a little bit, playing it smart, letting our money work for us.”

        Said Graves, who will make $2.1 million this season, “You better save your money. You don't know how long it (a work stoppage) is going to be, if there is one.”

        Players union head Donald Fehr began his annual tour of spring camps this week — he'll visit the Reds in mid-March — and he provided some hope when he said management has avoided the “overt hostility and overt threats” that seemed typical in the 1994 dispute.

        “That's a good sign,” Harnisch said. “Before, it was unfriendly, to say the least.”

        Players were reluctant to comment on specifics of the issues until Mr. Fehr briefs them. But they'd like to see negotiators on both sides sustain a major-league effort.

        Referring to Fehr, Selig and chief operating officer Paul Beeston, Stinnett said, “The guys here would rather put those three guys in a room, lock the door and tell them not to come out until they get something done. Sometimes you wish it were that simple.”

        Reds manager Bob Boone, who spent several years as the National League's player representative during his career as a catcher, said the union and owners share the burden of reaching an agreement.

        “A shutdown of the industry helps nobody,” he said.

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