Most baseball fans don't really care about the details to be debated between the players' union and club owners. They might be the smart ones, because it's not evident those discussions will seriously take place until after the players go on strike in August or September.
But it's too bad, in a way, because the fans have a stake in the arrangements. That's not the same as having leverage, of course. Nor do fans entirely lack power. The problem is that their power is the power to either care or not care, to buy or not to buy, and this power is diffused among millions of consumers, each making his own decisions.
When the players and the clubs decide to not play, they just shut it down entirely. But the fans can't shut it down entirely, because there are just so many with their own calls to make. The fans are always there, in greater or lesser numbers. Individually, fans can shut it down completely, but in the aggregate they can only decrease.
So players and club owners give lip service to consumers, hoping they won't decrease too much, then turn to fighting over the money they receive from those consumers, each side willing to fight to the game's maximum sustainable damage for the last dollar. It's like watching two people during a divorce in which each party goes deep for an attorney just to be sure the other party receives nothing.
The owners and union both lobby the fans for support, which is disingenuous. Naturally, some fans are tempted to take sides in the vain hope that there are good guys and bad guys in every conflict. But that's not really the norm right now.
People are pulling for neither side and against both. Remarkably, the game is so enthralling that millions watch anyway, even with all the nonsense and posturing.
That's why the players and club owners aren't really worried about a strike. They say they're worried about it, but where's the action? Lots of commentators think the game would be forever destroyed if the players strike before the end of the season in a pre-emptive move against a declaration of impasse and posted working conditions. But we don't see anyone trying to prevent a strike, which is the type of behavior we'd anticipate from people who truly believe a strike would forever damage the game.
Often enough, players and club owners talk like they hope fans won't come down too hard, but it doesn't echo in their actions. Just as often one hears the people who really stand to be hurt by a job action are "the fans," who are being "held hostage" in a dispute between millionaires and billionaires.
For people who live and work in and around the game, this kind of lip service to the customers probably sounds like good public relations, an acknowledgement that the customers have a stake in baseball. But it really says that fans are powerless and prone to be hurt.
Here in the real world, people can take Major League Baseball or leave it. They like baseball, but they've been bitten too many times to make an emotional investment. They're past hurt; they're calloused, or never trusted baseball from the start. Too many people understand that the narrative will be interrupted. Why buy into a season that won't pay back?
Attendance, which never returned to levels preceding the 1994 strike, is down 5.5 percent early this year. People are keeping baseball at arm's length. They want baseball to get its act together but aren't holding their breath.
Once upon a time, a baseball strike in mid-season was a shock to the system. By now, though, the game's credibility has diminished to the point of low expectations.
Not that one can't find stands among commentators concerned with the relative rightness of the players and owners. But the usual run of commentary is that the owners are greedy, duplicitous bumblers working at crossed purposes who not only can't be believed but can't possibly hold up against the rightness and unity of the Major League Baseball Players Association, heroes of free trade and the most reliable fighting force in America. The picture needs to be refreshed because it's outdated in terms of the players, then discarded because it's entirely irrelevant to the fans' interests.
So long as the players association fought for mobility, benefits and economic justice, they were on the right side. The players have met those goals and then some. Today the players are avowedly supporting the status quo, which fosters damaging competitive imbalance in the game at marginal advantage to themselves.
Now, some people will say that disparity is historically acceptable in baseball and, anyway, disparity isn't really a problem because more clubs than ever are finishing between .400 and .600. They're right as far as the facts go, but they're wrong if they think fans should be satisfied by past states of affairs and .400 ball clubs.
Excepting fans of the New York Yankees, baseball fans want competitive balance. They want their clubs to have a chance at a lot better than .400. It's not that fans can't live with competitive imbalance; it's just that balance makes a better game. It's in the fans' interests to support competitive balance, which means not supporting the status quo.
While it's real easy to disparage greedy club owners and their commissioner, take a look at what they're proposing. It's quite remarkable, considering how difficult it's been for owners to agree among themselves. The owners have placed on the table revenue sharing on 50 percent of local revenues, as well as a 50 percent tax on payroll higher than $98 million. If you're a fan of, say, the Reds, it sounds like a step in the right direction. The Reds could afford more players, while the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers could afford fewer.
The players oppose such revenue sharing because big-spending clubs would spend less and they can't be sure low-spending clubs will spend more. The players propose 20 percent of local revenues be pooled and split among the 25 lowest revenue clubs, which would make a very small difference.
Many examples have been marshaled in support of the players, showing that financial resources don't and can't guarantee victory -- the Baltimore Orioles, for one. But they show only that money isn't a sufficient condition for winning. They don't show that money isn't a necessary condition for winning over the long haul, nor can they.
Baseball's greatest period of the past 40 years occurred in the 1980s, when owners illegally constrained salaries through collusion. From 1982 through 1991, seven different American League clubs and eight National League clubs appeared in the World Series. Payroll disparity in those days was minimal.
We should never endorse or support illegal constraints, whatever the outcome. But if we can obtain those results through legal means, let's look at it. The ownership proposal starts to take us there. It needs strong provisions for minimum payrolls, to ensure that small market clubs don't just pocket their big market money. But it has built into it the payroll tax that acts as a soft salary cap, so clubs aren't required to lop off their best players like they do in the NFL.
Doubtless, the owners' proposal would depress player salaries a bit. But that's of absolutely no concern to fans. If the average player salary fell to $1.5 million from $2 million, why should fans even bat an eye?
Working in an industry buttressed by an anti-trust exemption that accrues financial benefits passed on to them, the players say all they really want is a free market. They're entitled to want what they want, but they're not entitled to prescribe what fans should want.
The point isn't players shouldn't pursue their interests or the owners are selfless stewards of the game who think only about the fans. It's only to say the fans have interests, too.
And if fans look at the labor conflict through the prism of their own interests, they might start to see the players and owners a little differently. Not better, just differently.
