What some sports fans say was Baseball’s “lowest moment” started on August 12, 1994, exactly twenty years ago. Many people look at that season and try to ask the same question they were asking twenty years ago, does baseball need a salary cap? Proponents of a salary cap will tell us that it’s needed in order to distribute the talent evenly and it will make sure small market teams don’t just disappear. However, we have recent examples such as the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays who had one of the lowest MLB payrolls that year, and the ever-thrifty Oakland Athletics who always seem to be at the bottom of payroll ranks yet are somehow often in playoff contention. If this is happening now, and even 1994 saw up to 15 teams in playoff contention, why were owners so concerned about power balance throughout the league? The simple answer is that they weren’t. The strike was never a salary cap issue-while it was about money, it was about what money was going into whose pocket.
The lowest moment in baseball indeed. The 1994 MLB strike left so many unanswered questions in its wake. The legendary Tony Gwynn was on pace to hit over .400, the home run record (then held by Maris) was in jeopardy, and the Yankees were about to make the playoffs for the first time in 13 years (so much for big market teams dominating!) Major League Baseball canceled the World Series for the first time in 90 years, back when the New York Giants owner refused to play against the “inferior” champions of the American League.
In 1994 the average salary for a player in the MLB was about $1.2 million according to CBSSports, $1, 188,679 to be exact. The owners wanted that number decreased, and they wanted more control when it came to striking a new collective bargaining agreement, all while masking these desires behind their owner-approved salary cap plan. After the strike was finally settled 232 days and many replacement players later, the fans of baseball had lost their sense of loyalty. Television ratings and game attendance fell sharply, and those who did show up were angry. Expletives and broken beer bottles littered the stands of parks throughout the league.
Would the fans ever come back?
Yes. Slowly.
It took 3 years and one of the most exciting home run races in the history of the game between Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa and Mark “Big Mac” McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals. It may be cliché and overstated, but the home run saved baseball, at least at this point in time. MLB may not have fully gained back the trust of the fans at this point, but they were distracted long enough to get back in the stands, this time without throwing the broken bottles. But what did the 1994 strike, the “lowest moment” in baseball, teach us?
“The long ball saved baseball”. Huge home run numbers, the power bats swinging, stuff legends are made of-how can we not sit and watch the titans of the late 90’s-early 2000’s MLB, when they were putting on such a fireworks display. Even though the 1994 MLB Strike affected record books, millions of dollars in losses, and questioned the loyalty of even the most loving fans, it seems as though we can take this as a learning experience not of how negative strikes are as a whole, rather of just how distracting fireworks can be.
After the 1995 season, the home run numbers continued to increase for ten years, into the height of the steroid era. However, this should be no surprise to anyone, seeing as how the long ball saved baseball. The increase in homer totals helped baseball reach television and attendance rating heights it hadn’t seen since before the strike, simply because it’s what we wanted. Kids bring their gloves to the games and want to sit in the outfield with the hopes of catching a homer. We all love it-the crack of the bat, the stare into the stands as he knows he hit the sweet spot, the possibility of ending the game with one swing of the bat-it’s the pinnacle in the sport. To say that the 1994 strike directly led to the steroid era is a bit of a stretch, but after that strike, it’s undeniable that the game changed for the next twenty years. We as fans wanted more offense, we craved it, and when they gave it to us we started to point fingers and ask questions. Now we blame steroids for everything, and suspect it of anyone having an abnormally good year.
One has to wonder, if there had never been a strike, if the ratings had never taken the haymaker that they did, would this witch hunt have ever started?
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