yesterday in Baltimore southpaw Bill Clinton threw his first pitch as president inaugurating Major League Baseball's 118th season while the ritual of opening day played out inside the park outside the Reverend Jesse Jackson led a protest against baseball's minority hiring practices it was just one more reminder that modern baseball has played both on and off the diamond and today the game's troubles off the field have come to dominate our national pastime tonight on Frontline what's wrong with baseball I don't count you don't count the game is not played for us first line examines the struggle between millionaire players and millionaire owners for control of the game I think one of the things that's really hurt baseball has changed the image so much is that now we focus so much on money to me the trouble with baseball with funding provided by the financial support of viewers like you and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting this is front line in America the first sounds of spring are the sounds of baseball at spring training the clean hopes for the new season mingled with still bright memories of seasons past I was seven years old walking up I guess that a little bit of must eNOS as you come up the runway and then my eyes being opened as a child that greenness was almost like walking into a into a virus [Music] [Applause] I remember the whole sweep of the field and the grass people and the noise when I was hanging around getting autographs in high school the thing to do you'd get a picture and then you would persuade the player to put your name on it as if he knew who you were hey let's go and the way it's like jazz jazz the homegrown American art form and baseball that I suppose it's original sports form [Applause] as a nice easy sunny quality to it sunshine Clyde to it but this year the hopes that surround each new baseball season have been battered by a brutal winter off the field after the World Series the networks argued that their next contract would drastically reduce baseball owners income and half the teams were already losing money the financial pressure escalated the war between owners and players the owners talking lockout the Players Union talking strike and then there was Marge Schott the owners were embarrassed into suspending the Cincinnati Reds owner for making racist remarks they fired Commissioner Fay Vincent for acting in the interests of baseballs I think not just the owners you could see what these people were saying and then Congress threatened to end the owners monopoly over baseball what conceivable reason is there for to us to continue to give baseball this unique privilege that no other sport no other business in America has but all the headlines are just symptoms of a deeper problem at the heart of baseball's trouble is a monument with struggled between millionaires a showdown between the players and owners for control of this 1.5 billion dollar game the basic problem between the players and the owners is it's been a battle for the economics of the game the the owners just refused to accept the fact that the players are their partners it really is them versus us mentality the the players loyalty is to the Union and to other players in the league players know now that it may be a game between the white lines but certainly as a business outside of the white lines so there is a foxhole mentality that exists in baseball it's the players on one side and the owners on the other baseball's troubles were born 18 years ago on the night of perhaps its greatest game October 1975 Fenway Park in Boston it is Game six of the World Series the upstart Boston Red Sox against the dominant team of the era the Cincinnati Reds Louie Tiant against Pete Rose Griffey and Fisk [Applause] the great Joe Morgan it is a seesaw game with great catches and heartbreaking misses [Applause] [Music] [Applause] by the eighth inning Boston's best pitcher has favored if the Red Sox lose Cincinnati will be the world champions in the bottom of the ninth behind by three runs Boston bats Bernie carbo pinch hits with two men on he quickly gets two strikes then miraculously a home run the game is tied six to six in the top of the 12th the Reds Joe Morgan hits a sure homerun but it's caught by Dwight Evans he throws out Griffey at 1st even Reds manager Sparky Anderson said it's just about the greatest catch I've ever seen that catch sets up one of the most memorable moments in baseball history [Music] it's now after midnight the game is still tied in the bottom of the 12th inning coming up to bat is local New England hero Boston catcher Carlton Fisk I can remember standing on the on-deck circle with Fred Lynn and just knowing something good was gonna happen now I don't know I just felt that something was going to happen the first pitch from Cincinnati reliever Pat Darcy is high ball one [Music] [Applause] if it stays fair it's almost like it happened to somebody else maybe because it was one of those moments where you were actually somebody else or he stepped outside yourself or above for a moment that one moment in the universe that is yours and yours alone and nobody else can can share it or maybe nobody else can even understand it more than 60 million Americans saw a fist will his dramatic home run to stay a fair ball it was the largest audience for a World Series in television history that hit that game has been called baseball's big bang two forces came together at that time which had dramatically changed the way the game has played off the field today the first was televisions realization that baseball could be sold to the public at primetime and because of that the dollar started to flow into the game right after that game the arbitrator in Kansas City opened the doors to allow players to move from one club to another when their contracts were up which forced the clubs to enter into a new collective bargaining agreement so at the same time that additional revenues were coming into the game the players now were getting more power to negotiate the bigger share of that pie Carlton Fisk hit his home run he was making $80,000 a year the average player was earning forty five thousand when I started playing baseball basically was viewed as a summertime job even if you were in the major leagues I played my first year 140 games for $12,000 and you know I was in the big leagues baseball owners like the Red Sox Tom Yawkey at extraordinary control over player salaries because of something called the reserve clause in all player contracts under the reserve rules that player was property he was owned by that organization really for the rest of his natural life unless the organization decided to sell them for cash or trade him for another player in 1966 the players hired labor lawyer Marvin Miller to take up their cause for nine years Miller led the players through court cases bare-knuckles negotiations and a strike by 1975 Miller and the Players Union had broken the reserve clause and created free agency which allowed experienced players to sell their services to any club they also started a system of salary arbitration to settle disputes between owners and players but for Carlton Fisk the coincidence of his greatest moment as a player and the union's victory launched him on a painful Odyssey that mirrors the troubles of major league baseball itself in the offseason after the 1975 series Fisk rejected the Red Sox offer of 125,000 dollars he and two other players decided to play the season without contracts if the Red Sox could not sign them they would become free agents the fans did not approve it were terribly upset and their people were throwing things at them screaming at them I mean we had people bangin on the bus yelling at Fisk and Burleson one time coming out of the ballpark and all they were doing for the first time there was this free market but the contracts they signed by today's standards were almost laughable by August fists gave in and signed again with the Red Sox for $170,000 double his old salary fist would stay in Boston but the movement of other players was underway for the next three years some of the biggest names in baseball like Reggie Jackson changed teams beneficiaries of high-stakes bidding by owners I think players began to realize that there are opportunities we're not limited just to the team they played for instead of just thinking about your hometown team your entire career you thought more about baseball as a as an industry across state boundaries this sudden movement of star players sparked intense fan interest with the addition of one or two key players any team could quickly improve their fortunes on the field but free agency also had a dark side as it broke down old loyalties between players the teams and the fans never once did I ever think that I would be playing somewhere zone and that was the dream of most of the boys in New England was either to play for the cell they should play for the Red Sox there were no other teams there are no other dreams in at least related to sports anyways I thought I'd end my career in Boston by 1980 Fisk had played in Fenway Park nine years he was an all-star seven times but in the offseason the Red Sox management lost their star in a colossal blunder the Red Sox postmarked his contract two days too late so I called him up and I said you know I read this and what can you tell me well he said it's true he said you know I have not been on good terms with the club have been bickering back and forth and they didn't make me a decent offer a year and no no and I haven't even sent me a contract Fiske demanded to be a free agent the case went to arbitration and at a team lunch Red Sox managing partner Haywood Sullivan burst into the room with a bad news well mr. Sullivan I just received a call from New York it thinks for the best case this has been declared a free agent by Raymond gets it happened about two hours ago Oh open the bar again one month later Fiske sold himself to the Chicago White Sox for $600,000 a year the White Sox had just been bought by Jerry Reinsdorf for 19 million dollars but he won't tell me which key goes into which luck so we're gonna have to figure that out Carlton Fisk had hitched his future to one of the new breed of baseball owners Jerry Reinsdorf before he bought the White Sox was one of the brightest lawyers savviest real estate syndicators in the city of Chicago believed at the time he was in his late 40s he had a few choices some men unfortunately choose new wives some choose new businesses or some buy new toys and I think Jerry and his partners found a new toy here I sorted something I'd really enjoy doing and you know and like all fans I thought that I could run a team better than the jerks that you know I've been running it in the past and you know I've gotten so much benefit out of being in Chicago I thought it'd be a great way to give something back to the community to buy a team and win the World Series at the time when I came over they were the organization basically was under new ownership you know by months they obviously appeared to me not to know much about baseball they were obviously wealthy enough to know a lot about business I have to say that we picked one of the strangest years to make art debut and a baseball business what a fabulous start we've made towards bringing a winner to this great city of Chicago how could anyone forget that day a record opening day crowd of over 51,000 fans were there and on that day Fargo's new hero well if it's hit a grand slam to beat the war this loved the team loved we sure love that the best of all what a great day for Chicago things and you know the best thing about it is only the beginning the signing of Carlton Fisk is a free agent 1981 was incredibly important because the White Sox at that time were the Rodney Dangerfield of baseball nobody gave the White Sox any respect the fists became a free agent no none of our fans ever thought that the lights actually could sign a premier player like that and when we were able to pull that off it immediately you know created credibility the first time Fisk played in Boston he beat his former teammates with a game-winning home run but he had lost something too I hadn't hard time dealing with my relationship with myself walking in front of the mirror with that uniform you know hey you know I had to it startled I was like who is that that's somebody else acquiring Fisk was the new owners first big move to improve the hapless White Sox they would pay him three million dollars over five years the White Sox deal if I may use a baseball metaphor it was not a homerun from the start they spent quite a bit of money on free agents Carlton Fisk among them and there was a capital call among the partners in the first few years they I can't remember the exact amount of money but they all had to write a few checks because there were some you know there were there were some business problems in the first couple of years but then as baseball luck would have it the White Sox caught fire and won their division well we won in 83 we actually made a million dollars but at that point I realized that this was going to be extremely difficult winning is expensive because you pay for winning after a team is won your salary jump up dramatically and then it's very hard to win the second time he started slashing the payroll so he wouldn't have to make another capitol call among his owners and as the team after winning deteriorated so dramatically in terms of quality his reputation started to suffer somewhat in 1984 the White Sox finished next to last attendance would slide for the next five years Tony LaRussa one of baseball's best managers left Reinsdorf began to trade away his expensive free agents and he didn't buy anymore we couldn't afford to just spend millions of millions of dollars and then it wasn't working anyway I mean signing of free agents is a triumph of Hope over experience because if you look at the records of players who leave their teams and sign long-term contracts with a new team almost invariably they have bad years Reinsdorf of course was not the only owner worried about rising salaries in 1985 Commissioner Peter Ueberroth told the owners that spending for free agents was leading them to financial ruin secretly the owners decided to do something about it for the next three winters the owners refused to bid on some of the best free agents in baseball hundreds of experienced players withered in the marketplace one of them was Carlton Fisk what Gerry tried to do to me in the winter of that first collusion year he tried to allow me to leave the White Sox and to go out as a free agent into that collusive market and I didn't want to when I refused to but he wanted me to go out in the market and shrivel and die an arbitrator found the owners guilty of conspiring to hold down salaries in a settlement they agreed to pay the players 280 million dollars remember that the worst scandal in the history of the game was said to be 8 players throwing some games in one World Series here for four years all of the owners and all of their officials the Commissioner League presidents their attorneys everybody was in a collision conspiracy not to improve a single team for any pennant race for close to four years which was the biggest scandal in the mid 80s while the owners benefited from their secret collusion television revenues continued to expand dramatically in Chicago Jerry Reinsdorf is now making money with the White Sox but on the field the team's fortunes continued to sag mmm-hmm I don't think that's a secret at least in Chicago the owner would rather just stay competitive that's where he makes his biggest profit margin if he's just competitive doesn't have to win and Reinsdorf had another idea to make the white sox more profitable he asked the state of Illinois to build him a new stadium because he thought he couldn't make enough money in old Comiskey Park because of the influence of television on the economics of baseball and the fact that you had to go to the free agent market to buy players early and often you needed a stadium that was economically not at obsolete and Comiskey Park was economically obsolete because he had a lot of posts he had about 20,000 obstructed seats that you could not maximize revenue off of on a unit for unit basis on opening day in 1985 in his owners box Reinsdorf started to sell the idea to his old friend from law school Illinois Governor Jim Thompson they really didn't have to sell me I mean I think I knew that I didn't want to lose the White Sox for the city and for the state and so I was a willing partner from the beginning and I was willing to accommodate almost any set of arrangements as long as they made sense to me as the the keeper of the state purse but Ron Shaw's plan was attacked by legislators who said the new stadium who didn't make financial sense so in 1988 he brought the issue to a crisis he threatened to move the white sauce Reinsdorf flew to Florida where he met the governor and was offered a brand-new rent-free domed stadium by the city of st. Petersburg people were very very upset and very hurt and felt very betrayed that the owners of a baseball team who in most customers mind not only operated business but are really the keepers of a public trust would do such a thing to the expires which was then they themselves they couldn't believe it as opposition mounted a critical vote on the new Chicago Stadium loomed in the Illinois legislature we didn't have much time to spare in the house and there weren't a lot of fancy arguments and in the house the opponents were already singing 9 ienai goodbye you know they wanted to see the White Sox I mean there was a there was a contingent of the legislature that said hey let him go so I had to fight that notion about to take the record on this this may be it for the White Sox there is a great deal attention here people are waiting for the gamble to come down WMAQ radio was carrying the proceedings and I listened and Thompson came on the floor and they kept announcing one more vote one more vote all the sudden that did look like this thing was gonna pick up steam and we were gonna get to the sixty votes that we needed to get the stadium Thompson had to find enough votes by midnight I'm not sure what o'clock the folks there you think the Speaker of the House ignored the real time until the governor twisted one more arm Thompson won the state would issue one hundred fifty million dollars in bonds to build the new ballpark wine stores got his new stadium and it would be rent-free if he didn't sell one point between an Indian tickets a year [Applause] Comiskey Park is actually designed a lot like Disneyworld everything moves unseen the clubhouse is one of the largest club houses in baseball behind us here you will see Carlton Fisk's Locker Carlton gets the place of honor he gets the one closest to the training room there are 1000 doors in Comiskey Park we're going into a room that has about a million dollars worth of equipment in it this is called the club level 1,800 seats private access waiter and waitress service at your seat and a great view of the game this is a Members Only Club for season ticket holders it cost $500 a year for a membership plus your food and beverage this is pretty typical of one of our Suites that rents for $60,000 a year this is the main eating area of the stadium Club you can really sometimes forget that there's a game going on it's a little quieter in here you have a great steak in front of you a great glass of wine it can distract you you like going to Comiskey Park don't let go in the Comiskey Park I have been to the new Comiskey and if you are not sitting on the lower level you might as well not even go I don't like right Darya ballpark I don't it's it's too moleish I don't like skyboxes and I don't like valet parking that is not the true baseball fan and I think it'd be nice if we could return a large portion of the stadium to the working class so we could all have a little more fun there I was raised on a white sox fan to the hilt I've got to admit though after this thing happened I stopped going and it's not just Comiskey Park I've stopped liking baseball I don't count you don't count the game is not played for us it is played for television the economic scale of baseball is taken away what was so profoundly human about [Music] by the winter of 1992 for the fans in Chicago the White Sox troubles of the 1980s had become a distant memory for the first time in a decade it was beginning to look like the team was a serious contender for the American League pennant Jerry Reinsdorf strategy of trading away older more expensive players and rebuilding his team around younger men had finally paid off starting in the middle of the 89th season our team got better and you know I'm we've we've been a significant contender and in 1991-92 and you know I'm sure that 93 a lot of people think that we're gonna win Reinsdorf and his partners had turned the club around financially as well in the last two years alone they earned thirty five million dollars in profits interesting idea Reinsdorf who also owns the Chicago Bulls had become a powerful figure in professional sports his baseball management team had earned a reputation as one of the best in the business where do we stand with on the issue of Raglan sleeves on the home jerseys there's a couple things we look to make decisions how do we want to raise the parking this year we always cost you something we have to stand on somebody's chest this year and get this done right so I don't want to go nuts and I think we should support the Hall of Fame it is over four years it's not a lot of money per year he's a very practical hard-nosed businessman who puts a good product on the field and makes money with the team and I think Ryan stork is viewed by a lot of people as about the best operator of a franchise in the game but not everybody is doing so well [Applause] just 90 miles up Lake Michigan the Milwaukee Brewers the smallest franchise in baseball is in big trouble I remember my first few years running the Brewers 1970 71 and 72 this was a simple little three million dollar operation and you had to figure out how to generate three million dollars in revenue now you're in a situation we have three or four players on this team making three million dollars plus a year so so everything's changed the Brewers finished near the top of their division last year they beat their rivals the Chicago White Sox seven times out of 12 but while the White Sox took in nearly 80 million dollars the Brewers grossed only about half that now we've got about 5,000 seats that are not sold but they're being held for the you know player allowed men what that means for Milwaukee's red $40 is that every dollar counts five setup cars there's a problem that we're having in Tim brought this up the other day if we pay 400 bucks every time we have to rent that tent from Carl's the day-to-day running of the team is handled by Bud Selig daughter Wendy the real problem an inherent problem with being a small market is that our revenues are determined strictly by the demographics of our market however our expenses and our primary expense of course main player salaries is determined by the 28 markets including New York LA Chicago and so it's become increasingly difficult to operate in a small market and to stay competitive [Music] the real problem for small market teams like Milwaukee is the money they get from television every major league team gets the same share of network television revenues thirteen and a half million dollars last year but because Milwaukee is such a small market it receives only 3.1 million from local television the White Sox get almost three times that from channels in Chicago it's often referred to that the New York Yankees get somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million dollars for their local television rights so they're dependency on their portion of the national TV rights obviously far less significant than a club like the Milwaukee Brewers and so the ceilings cut back on the most important a role of all their players Paul Molitor Jim Gantner and Robin Yount played together longer than any other three players in the history of baseball but we got to a point this year where Paul Molitor was a free agent there's no question he would have liked to have stayed here and we would have very much like for him to have stayed here but we got to a point where Toronto was able to offer him a far more lucrative contract than we were able to and as a result he is now a Toronto Blue Jay the more Nickey stuffs the better off we are here in Milwaukee get those tickets out now as costs go up the Brewers fortunes are tied directly to their ability to get fans into the stadium but they play an old tired County Stadium where open beams block thousands of seats in fact Sports Illustrated recently named this area the second worst seat in baseball we have it we have it all here for that couple who wants to spend some time alone we have it right here second worst seat baseball would hate to get that worst seat you can't raise ticket prices indiscriminately this is family entertainment we agonized over over a dollar ticket at our most expensive seats the others we don't touch and you have no idea what kind of reaction you get from people about that and yet if you do that you're still only talking about generation of another million dollars at the most of net revenue so Bud Selig wants a new stadium and he wants a share of the larger clubs television revenue otherwise the City of Milwaukee might lose its team you have the big market cities the big television markets such as Chicago and New York Atlanta which refused to share their local television revenues with the small market teams like Milwaukee and Seattle as examples however they do compete for the same product they do compete to buy players and as a result the small markets are being killed by the big markets buying up the small market players back in Chicago the White Sox have learned how to make money even in the dead of winter [Music] it's called sucks Fest on a cold February afternoon thousands of eager fans spend 15 dollars for an early baseball fix [Music] there's booths here there's autographs defenders there's all sorts of memorabilia this is a great way for an organization to sell tickets and to increase its visibility in the in the prime selling time of the year when it comes to season tickets and sponsorships the players were here too out of uniform but freshly signed to their contracts [Applause] [Music] ozzie guillen six point five million dollars over four years Abner five hundred fifty thousand dollars a year Ryan target back three years five point seven five million bo Jackson [Applause] if he plays all season he could earn two and a half million dollars our payroll the first year at this was about three million dollars now our payroll probably is gonna be in the middle 30 Millions so payrolls going up ten times since the beginning but it took a year to before I realized you know what was gonna happen here's how Reinsdorf says he loses control of his own payroll take the case of Jack McDowell white socks black Jack McDowell became the first major league pitcher to win 20 games in 1992 and the right-hander its this winter McDowell asked for four million dollars Reinsdorf offered 3.1 million McDowell took the White Sox to arbitration when players in the fourth fifth and six years in the major leagues cannot agree with their owner on a salary the dispute is settled by an arbitrator who must decide whether the club's offer or the players demand is the most fair the white sox argued that mcdonald had only four years service and no player that young had ever been paid four million dollars and it looked like the arbitrator was going to agree fine the hearing ends and within five hours the Atlanta Braves announced they'd signed John Smoltz to 16 million dollars for four years same exact service there goes the arc south of window if they held off of 48 hours Ryan store would have won the the arbitration case we're at the mercy of an arbitrary we have to pay each of our players what our dumbest competitor pays his players [Music] but Jerry Reinsdorf ugliest battle over money this year was with Carlton Fisk now 45 Fisk wanted to play at least one more season so he could break the major league record for the most games ever played by a catcher but Reinsdorf offered Fiske $500,000 only half of what he was paid last year Fiske refused to sign and for the seventh time in 13 years they were fighting over money I have a lot of I run the whole gamut of emotions at times I run from angry to mad I run from discouraged to disappointed to not caring Karla fish a great ballplayer and he's done a lot to this franchise and the fans love him and that you know that day and they want him back but how many years did you overpay him in 1992 Carlton Fisk made over a million dollars and played in about 50 games and I think Carlton Fisk was entitled to have a year where he got paid more than he produced but not two years I think it's that's all started out personally and then it's just gotten worse and worse and Jerry can say what he wants as far as he likes me he does not like me and I don't like what he's done to me I don't dislike him well when you're when you're not taping I'll talk to you about that twelve years ago Carlton Fisk ignited Jerry Reinsdorf new White Sox for much of his career was considered the best catcher in the game during that time Reinsdorf had paid him thirteen and a half million dollars and it's really sad that it ends up this way that he is cold hard cash the rinds are sitting there saying hey this is all business Fisk cares no other market I'll give one I want to give him and he'll play for whatever one he'll play for me for whatever and there's no romance or no sentiment involved it's too bad and I think history's going out just like another guy who had to fight for a contract and it's it's very sad in December as Carlton Fisk faced the bitter ending of his long career baseball leaders gathered at their annual winter meetings [Music] well it's a sort of like the annual convention of baseball it's sort of here anybody in baseball you have to be here and it just really it's a great gossip center and the talk at this year's meetings was all about how the owners and players would divide up Major League Baseball's billions they finally had to deal with the bad news the television networks had lost 500 million dollars on baseball and they made it clear they would cut back sharply on the next contract behind closed doors the owners were in disarray they had fired Commissioner Fay Vincent and now they couldn't begin to agree on a solution to baseball's problems without a commissioner in place right now there really is no leadership among the owners the only thing they can agree on is that the players make too much money Milwaukee's Bud Selig was now running baseball as head of the owners Executive Committee they had hired Richard Ravich a New York politician to force new contract talks with the players state of baseball is that the owners just finished a season in which they essentially made no money from operations whatsoever they suffered some reductions in attendance this year and baseball's been told that they could expect some not inconsiderable reduction their national TV contract in 1994 so they face some potential problems on the revenue side potentially very serious problems but even as the owners argued that baseball's bottom line was lousy they were also proving they lacked the self-control to fix it the players were the Winter Meetings - pitcher David Cone has a great fastball and he's available just off-camera his agent waited for the feeding frenzy but he didn't have to wait long cone was snapped up by Kansas City for 18 million dollars over three years and then there was Barry Bonds after a bidding war the 28 year old bonds became the richest player in baseball the owners of the San Francisco Giants had just agreed to pay him 44 million dollars over six years in one 24-hour period owners coughed up 260 million dollars for free agents I think this last December really hit some guys between the eyes some of these owners are like kids with their first fees at cards I mean they don't really see the cause and effect of I spend now the bill comes in with 21 percent interest later and they're starting to realize that they signed this guy here for X amount of money BAM and impact somebody else in arbitration the sites that have taken place in the last four months but absolutely staggering baseball has already committed in 1994 over 480 million dollars for only a hundred and eighty two players that's that's out of a total of roughly 700 players that 480 million dollars is more than the entire payroll of baseball was in 1989 the owners only solution was to go to the players and demand a salary cap which would limit their to a fixed percentage of the owner's income they told rabbit to begin negotiations dick is a man who loves challenges loves the dirt under the fingernails and and it's like a political campaign for him privates told the players he wanted the salary cap in place by next year if not the owners might lock the players out of spring training what they've basically done is they fired the first volley across the bow they're not necessarily saying we're going for your broadside but we've got our ammunition loaded up and ready to go but the president of the players you know when Donald fears had other ideas wait a minute before you come looking to the players you better get your own house in order if they want the players to take less they better be prepared to quantify how much less and why it's needed and where it's going and why it should come from player sources and other sources fears that he won't talk salary caps until the owners begin to share their local television revenue fear is sitting there in the catbird seat and and really is not gonna budge on any form of concession until number one the owners get together and figure out how to share their revenues more equitably and then the question only becomes what percentage of the pot goes to the entertainers and what percentage of the pot goes to the promoters know you love the game that's why you get in it but I never realized when I got in it there'd be so many problem not CBS revenue sharing was a hot topic among the owners and in this discussion between the White Sox Eddie Einhorn and Jack sands until your club Steinbrenner's of the world Ted Turner WGN are prepared to do some form of revenue sharing with the other clubs how can they expect the players to handle the problem themselves you know when we bought this team we bought the market of Chicago we didn't buy Cincinnati we didn't buy Pittsburgh we bought Chicago all right therefore before I share my money with the lesser mark and who might not run it as well who might spend it before I give my money to another guy who might hurt me I want to know that there's something in it for me we'll straighten it out I big market owners are unwilling to help out the small market owners except to help them get money from the players the only thing they can ever agree upon among themselves is that players make too much money and everybody's problems could would be eased to whatever extent you can get the players to take less money in some fashion unless they come to believe that the national television revenues are going to be down by millions of dollars per club until they recognize that and accept the reality of that they're living in a dream world and they're kidding themselves I'll tell you the mark of any good business being in this world of the market any good Union leader is not to wait until the hit the fan before you do something but till we anticipate it and and prepare for it and plan for it they have to come together and then go to the players and say all right we need to have a partnership we have to be in this together we've got to stop fighting we got to stop complaining about one another we've got to act at the best interests of this business together baseball's Winter Meetings ended in chaos without a new Commissioner without an agreement among the owners about revenue sharing and with the owners and the players far apart on what to do about baseball's problems oh yeah us all right the day after the Winter Meetings baseball's leaders were summoned to Capitol Hill not the first time that there have been Gretl hearings on baseball's antitrust exemption I think what makes it somewhat different this time is the Joker in the deck which is the former Commissioner fav insertion because the owner so recently ousted fades as commissioner I think there is some concern that his testimony could be damaging to them but see Lee works head of the Executive Council and the Commissioner Pro Tem will be batting second the question is will he be trying to move a over to second and will we be trying it with double play to get it over with still probably very cordial with each other even though Vincent was fired by Selig probably the one group of people that they dislike more than each other or the Players Association is Congress the only way Congress can control baseball's owners is through the special exemption from the antitrust laws that allows baseball to act as a monopoly Congress was angry enough about Vincent's firing and baseball's disorder that it was now threatening to remove the exemption one of the things you have to bear in mind is I take the view that the Commissioner can't be fired but anybody who thinks I wasn't fired is naive without a strong Commissioner to take responsibility for baseball many in Congress fear the owners will simply leave the game from the next Commissioner what ills baseball in America mr. chairman his irresponsible team ownership ownership that with each passing year increasing increasingly acts as if baseball is its personal fiefdom cheap to be operated for one purpose profit for the owners they're truly out of control the owners chairman Bud Selig tried to come the committee's temperature and assure that baseball was under control I don't think there's anything threatening about that in my judgment on the contrary I think if you look at these actions and you understand the statements of people III think that frankly we've acted very responsibly and very sensitive but the committee was in no mood to become baseball seems to play the kind of hardball you see in most other businesses under those circumstances what conceivable reason is there for to us to continue to give baseball this unique privilege that no other sport no other business in America has thanks a lot thank you very much thank you thank falling the here witness two bills were introduced to eliminate baseball special antitrust exemption young grist will debate the issue later this spring and I fully intend to reintroduce this legislation in the 103rd Congress because I feel strongly that competition and fairness is important they small is an American asset and it's not being run right and I think part of what we need to do is to bring back the Field of Dreams [Music] it has been 18 years since Carlton Fisk's homerun the big bang that created baseball's new wealth the owners and players seem to know that greed is damaging the game but they are unable to control their appetites we already lessons they're just tired of hearing about these ballplayers were making four million dollars wanting five million dollars and they're tired of owners who they think have unlimited funds not being willing to give him the four million dollars they want every about baseball and they don't want to read about billionaires fighting with each other in March Carlton Fisk finally returned to the White Sox he had angrily accepted Reinsdorf last offer $650,000 but for Fisk there was a final insult Reinsdorf insisted that he signed a minor-league contract the White Sox all-star catcher had no guarantee he would make the team Fisk would have to prove to reinstall he was still good enough to play in the big leagues I think that the Carlton Fisk Jerry Reinsdorf battle is symbolic of what has turned an awful lot of people off instead of a guy a certain hall-of-famer who has one of the great moments in baseball history the sixth game in 75 instead of going out in his last year with dignity it's that hard line dollar okay you know Jack McDowell is gonna get us four billion in arbitration we're gonna tuck at the Fisk for whatever we have to paint he's as much a victim of arbitration filings hard lining from players on the upscale as he is from Jerry rhinestone I thought guys twins look at your shoes it's too bad that the feelings are so hard in baseball today and there's so little enjoyment in it that someone like that has to go out this way they're in much love of the game it's it's a very hard hard bitter business [Music] [Laughter] [Music] funding for frontline is provided by the financial support of viewers like you and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting frontline is produced for the documentary consortium by WGBH Boston which is solely responsible for its content or video cassette information about this program please call this toll-free number 1-800 three to eight TBS one
