Thursday, April 25, 2002
Baseball owners push deal to avert strike
Reds cited as having lots to lose
By John Erardi jerardi@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Reds have a “window of at least a couple of years” to capitalize on the financial benefits that Great American Ball Park will bring in when it opens next year, said Major League Baseball's executive vice president, Sandy Alderson.
After that, Mr. Alderson said, the game needs to fix its competitive imbalance or the Reds could have trouble competing for championships again.
“The industry has to solve its problems in the next two or three years ... (or) some of these problems will begin to show up in places, possibly like Cincinnati,” said Mr. Alderson.
Major League Baseball brought its road show to Cincinnati on Wednesday to discuss its position in labor negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players' Association. Management and union negotiators are trying to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement to avoid the sport's ninth work stoppage since 1972. Management has said it will not lock out players or impose changes through the World Series.
Mr. Alderson and management negotiator Rob Manfred emphasized to The Cincinnati Enquirer the need to restore baseball's competitive balance that existed from the early 1970s to 1994, just before the previous work stoppage. During that period, the Reds made the World Series five times.
Reds general manager Jim Bowden has said revenues generated by Great American Ball Park — projected to be about $15 million a year, even after expenses and revenue sharing are deducted — will allow the Reds to add players who can help them compete for a championship.
With teams such as the New York Yankees able to have player payrolls well above $100 million annually, and the Reds settling for salaries totaling less than half that, Major League Baseball sees a problem. Teams such as the Reds have difficulty competing.
Great American is scheduled to open next April and should help. It is the only new big-league park opening next year, so the Reds are the only one of the 30 teams to get such a potential bump in revenues.
MLB officials cautioned, however, that the Reds' good times at Great American won't continue to roll without a labor agreement that addresses the issue of competitive balance.
“It has to be an agreement that solves some of these fundamental problems so that at the end of this two- or three-year window the stadium has created, the breathing room it provides for a team like the Reds is not wasted,” said Mr. Alderson.
John Allen, the Reds' chief operations officer, said Major League Baseball was setting up meetings with local newspapers so owners could speak with one voice about labor and financial matters, rather than having 30 ball clubs give their interpretations. He referred questions about the impact of labor negotiations on the Reds' new stadium to MLB officials.
The experiences of the Pittsburgh and Milwaukee franchises don't augur well for the Reds. The Pirates and Brewers have found themselves with greatly decreased season ticket bases this year after they failed to produce winning teams in their newly opened ballparks last year.
The lesson: The Reds will probably need a contending team next year — rather than merely beginning to ramp up their payroll and performance — to keep drawing well into the future.
Teams are no longer leaping ahead of their competition because of their revenues from new stadiums; “they are (merely) catching up,” Mr. Alderson said.
Management officials said they realize that whatever public opinion comes out of these city-by-city visits won't affect how quickly a settlement can be reached.
“It's very important from the commissioner's perspective that fans understand that our stance began from a position of moderation, that we have acted in a way designed to avoid confrontation and that we (want an agreement) that accomplishes the things we want to accomplish without a (work) stoppage,” said Mr. Manfred, MLB executive vice president for labor relations and human resources.
An official with the players' union said it would have no comment on MLB's presentation. At some point, he said, the union might address the management statements, but for now is working toward a negotiated settlement.
Neither side is threatening a work stoppage. But, after the World Series, the owners could declare an impasse and implement their last offer. If that appears likely, the players' strongest option is to strike this season.
“I feel there will be a deal when management is willing to negotiate one,” Reds shortstop Barry Larkin said.
Both sides are hoping to avoid a work stoppage after the last one — which ended the 1994 season with no World Series — caused such acrimony among fans.
Major League Baseball has has a credibility issue with players and the media about financial figures, although MLB's release of club-by-club earnings and expenses in December was unprecedented.
Still, doubts persist about the reliability of that data, even in Cincinnati, where in 2000 the Reds drew 2.58 million fans, second-best in franchise history, yet said they lost money. The Reds don't divulge how that happened, except to allude to a $10 million check they had to write as part of their contribution toward the new ballpark and interest on a loan to buy the ball club.
The Reds are the only major-league club that is spending less (11 percent) on players than they did in 1995, even though their revenues went up 110 percent in that period. Much of that is attributable to former owner Marge Schott's big-spending ways on major-league payroll.
John Byczkowski and John Fay contributed to this report.
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Baseball owners push deal to avert strike
