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sports What if the 1994 strike never happened?


CastletonSnob

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Hard to say. The '94 strike had the long-term benefit of scaring both the owners and the players' union into working more closely with each other. It's easy to forget that strikes were becoming more pervasive into the 80s and the early 90s. What it finally took for labor peace was killing the World Series and each side becoming so mega-rich that fans were turned off altogether.

 

No '94 strike might have saved the Montreal Expos. That's the biggest difference I can think of. I suspect a strike would've eventually erupted down the line, however, unless the owners and players were savvy enough to understand it was better to bargain. I have my doubts about their collective wisdom in lieu of the strike's trauma. I think steroid testing would've been practically impossible to implement, given how notoriously conservative baseball tends to be in comparison to the other major sports. The strike's aftermath prompted improved CBAs (collective bargaining agreements) which eventually addressed PEDs in the mid-2000s. Provided the owners and players were still sniping at each other as they did prior to '94, I doubt the players would've budged.

 

The NHL had a devastating strike in around 2005 which hurt its popularity in the US. I remember how hockey was comparable to baseball, football, and basketball in popularity prior to losing an entire season to labor disputes; after that, it became much more regional. If baseball had fallen into a similar rut, football would likely end up ruling the roost for a longer period. Of course, now football is suffering from overexposure and backlash related to its handling of players' health and domestic violence. But that's another thread altogether.

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I'm not sure it would be the #1 sport in the country based on the strike alone. But I do think baseball has made a series of terrible mistakes that have seriously hurt its place in the eyes of the American sports fan, some of which came as side effects of the strike.

 

The most obvious is Interleague Play, which was Herr Selig's* plan to bring back the fans that gave up on the sport after the disaster of '94. While it has created added interest for games between teams within close proximity to one another, it also created games between bottom-rung teams nobody has any interest in watching (Tampa Bay vs. Arizona, Miami vs. Minnesota) that have virtually no meaning whatsoever. It's also destroyed the value of national games. One of the big draws to the national games was, for half the country, a chance to see two teams that were never on in your local market. Reds fans could see the Tigers play. Mariners fans could see the Giants. Now, when everybody comes to town, there's much less draw to watch teams that aren't yours. And then there's the case of the All Star Game. Think back to the 1993 All Star Game, and the now-legendary matchup between John Kruk and Randy Johnson. What made that moment unique? It was the first (and only) time they ever faced each other, and it was on national television in front of all of the biggest stars of the game. If that had happened in May between the Phillies and a 4th place Mariners team, there's a decent chance we wouldn't remember it at all. Almost everything that made the All Star Game unique and by far the best of the major professional sport all star games has been eliminated by the poor job the MLB has done of managing it.

 

The more baseball attempts to "fix" itself, the bigger the hole it digs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*: Acting Commissioner for Life

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I'm not sure it would be the #1 sport in the country based on the strike alone. But I do think baseball has made a series of terrible mistakes that have seriously hurt its place in the eyes of the American sports fan, some of which came as side effects of the strike.

 

The most obvious is Interleague Play, which was Herr Selig's* plan to bring back the fans that gave up on the sport after the disaster of '94. While it has created added interest for games between teams within close proximity to one another, it also created games between bottom-rung teams nobody has any interest in watching (Tampa Bay vs. Arizona, Miami vs. Minnesota) that have virtually no meaning whatsoever. It's also destroyed the value of national games. One of the big draws to the national games was, for half the country, a chance to see two teams that were never on in your local market. Reds fans could see the Tigers play. Mariners fans could see the Giants. Now, when everybody comes to town, there's much less draw to watch teams that aren't yours. And then there's the case of the All Star Game. Think back to the 1993 All Star Game, and the now-legendary matchup between John Kruk and Randy Johnson. What made that moment unique? It was the first (and only) time they ever faced each other, and it was on national television in front of all of the biggest stars of the game. If that had happened in May between the Phillies and a 4th place Mariners team, there's a decent chance we wouldn't remember it at all. Almost everything that made the All Star Game unique and by far the best of the major professional sport all star games has been eliminated by the poor job the MLB has done of managing it.

 

The more baseball attempts to "fix" itself, the bigger the hole it digs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*: Acting Commissioner for Life

 

It's a JOKE that Selig got in the Hall before Rose. 

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Is what Rose did really as bad as taking steroids?

To be blunt, yes.

 

To elaborate, throwing games, or compromising games in order to win later games, is never acceptable and is every bit as damaging to the game as PEDs. Consider this scenario. The Reds are playing a game on Thursday. They're up 2-1 late in the game, in a situation where you'd normally bring in a closer. But Rose has money bet on tomorrow night's game against the Dodgers, so he saves his closer to keep him fresh on the hypothetical chance that he might need him the next game. Even though he's only betting on his team, he's throwing one game to improve his odds of winning another.

 

Furthermore, betting on baseball is every bit as illegal as PED use, and has much stricter and better established penalties. PEDs were outlawed at earliest (in a mostly unenforceable proxy fashion) in 1992, but the full ban was not completely instituted and enforced until 2004. Gambling, on the other hand, has been very clearly outlawed for nearly a century. Rose is a scholar of the game. He knows tons about baseball. He's lived and breathed it for decades, even without being allowed contact with it. It's why Fox still uses him for pregame and postgame stuff from time to time. But that also means that he knows--and knew--that betting on baseball has been illegal since 1919. There is a notice in every locker room (printed in multiple languages) that expressly forbids gambling. Rose knew the rules; he just didn't care.

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