He described replacement baseball as a “sham” and believed it would destroy Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak which would be broken on Sept. One of the few owners not to participate was Baltimore’s Peter Angelos, who was a labor lawyer before getting into baseball. Once the sport was ordered to resume regular business, the sides agreed to a 144-game season and there were nine trades before the season started with Delino DeShields facing John Burkett as the first batter of the season on April 25 in an 8-7 win by the Los Angeles Dodgers in Miami. If you get rid of the best 800 players in the world and replace them, everybody notices.” “It’s not the uniforms people come to watch.
Bill clinton 1994 mlb strike series#
And in that group included players like Kevin Millar, Rick Reed and Shane Spencer, who would eventually appear in World Series games for the Red Sox, Mets and Yankees respectively.Īnyone who participated regardless of experience were deemed strikebreakers by the player’s union and spring training games were played before small crowds, prompting former union head Donald Fehr to say then:
Nothing happened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and shortly thereafter spring training began with replacement players who were there for various reasons and had varying degrees of previous experience.Īmong the more notable former players were Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, who had last pitched in 1991 for Montreal and Willie Hernandez, the 1984 AL MVP and AL CY Young Winner. 1995 the sides were in the White House with President Bill Clinton while trying to mediate a solution. 14 the season was canceled, something that not even two World Wars could achieve and by Feb. None of this was played to completion (unless you count replays on Strat-O-Matic) and by Aug. It also was a year when each division race featured no gap larger than 6 1/2 games and that included the AL West where the Texas Rangers led despite being 52-62. 300 after any of the 110 games he appeared in 1994. To demonstrate how well Gwynn was going, his average was never under. In Vincent’s place came Bud Selig, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers.īy 1994 owners wanted to instate a salary cap in a sport where in that season the average payroll was approximately $33 million and the highest payrolls belonged to the Atlanta Braves ($49 million) and the Yankees ($46 million).Īll of this labor strife was unfolding as the sport was experiencing numerous positive storylines (the Baseball Network was not one of them) in its first season with six divisions.Īfter ending four years of losing, the Yankees were poised to return to the playoffs for the first time since 1981, the Expos acquired Pedro Martinez from the Dodgers had the best record in the sport, Matt Williams was on a pace to threaten Roger Maris’ then record of 61 homers while Tony Gwynn who flirted with batting.
0 kommentar(er)
