As Sam Sees It

An early deadline means that my column needs to be done before the strike date set by the Major League Baseball Players’ Association has past. As this is being written, there remains a chance that a settlement will have been reached. Otherwise, baseball has just done the business equivalent of losing a game of Russian roulette.

The principals have failed to come up with a “solution” that would let both sides declare partial victories even if they left issues that would, undoubtedly, arise again. Now we will likely have the rest of what should have been this season to think about the play-offs and World Series the short-sightedness of players and owners alike has cost us, the fans.

The Arizona Diamondbacks were a virtual lock for the National League Western Division title when the strike deadline approached. No team had more to lose if a strike had occurred. No city had more to lose than Phoenix and no group of fans more to lose than those of us in Arizona.

Diamondbacks pitchers Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling were (and are) in a fierce if friendly battle for the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the league. (If justice were truly served, they would share the award both deserve. In fact, they should have shared it last season.)

This franchise had built a fan base that was loyal and turned out in great numbers. Treat them right and the Diamondbacks could have counted on fan support in Phoenix and Arizona for decades to come.

It is still hard to believe that players on this team would risk losing so much for issues that would only benefit a few greedy owners, a handful of players and the cheats who use steroids to assist their assaults on hallowed baseball records.

There was wrong on both sides. A few owners, namely those who sign players for totally unreasonable amounts, as did the New York Yankees, New York Mets and Texas Rangers recently, have jeopardized the game. If owners were all reasonable and adhered to sensible practices, no restraint would be necessary. Unfortunately, some have more money than sense. For the good of the game, they need to be restrained. Unfortunately, it is this reasonable restraint that the players union resists the hardest.

This strike has altered the way many fans will look at their former idols. We may root for our favorite players on the field again, but many fans will also remember that they were willing to do irreparable harm to the game we love. In fact, many will not be coming back.

The last strike (1994) all but killed baseball in Montreal and damaged it severely in other places. The call for the “contraction” of the Expos is ludicrous considering that it was the strike that did most of the harm to that franchise. The fans there did not come back after both the owners and the players betrayed them. Phoenix may well have be the Montreal of 2002.

Baseball is still the greatest game. Major League Baseball, though, is going to remain flawed as long as there are the seeds of another strike contained within whatever agreement owners and players hash out.

We fans may come back to the ballparks around America some day. However, just the threat of a strike has made us a little less admiring and trusting of the people on both sides of this issue. The actuality of one will be costly to all parties. For that reason, I hope that an agreement has been reached that makes this column commentary on an event that is already history. If there is a strike, there will be no winners.

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