• U.S.

STRIKING OUT, SWINGING

3 minute read
Michael Kramer

Red Sox fans like me are inured to disappointment. You can look it up. We know too that our idols are also commodities. Indeed, for us, the evil nexus of money and sports began in Boston in 1919, when the Sox owner sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees to raise the funds to produce No, No, Nanette on Broadway.

Given this history, Bill Clinton’s failure to revive baseball, which may have surprised some, didn’t surprise us. Clinton’s only real weapon, moral suasion, has never trumped greed–and greed is what this whole sorry mess is all about. “It’s just a few hundred folks trying to figure out how to divide nearly $2 billion,” said the President plaintively. “They ought to be able to do that.” Clinton obviously didn’t understand that the baseball strike is like Somalia: simple on the outside, a quagmire once you’re in. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who enjoyed a cushy teaching gig before moving inside the Beltway, seems similarly at sea. “I’ve never seen this degree of animosity,” said Reich. “I can’t explain it.” Well, listen, Mr. Secretary, we’re not talking about some garden-variety dysfunctional family here. These are selfish, spoiled sorts–billionaire owners who treat their teams as toys and millionaire players who charge kids for autographs. To comprehend the distrust between the two sides in this dispute, look to Northern Ireland for guidance.

As Clinton said when the negotiations collapsed last week, there’s blame enough to go around. Among the politicians, though, it’s the congressional Republicans who most deserve disdain.

Consider the tortured logic and faux piety behind the G.O.P.’s excuses for inaction. Newt Gingrich, prattling on about free-market sanctity, says “every other industry” would seek relief if Congress intervenes. “This is just a private labor dispute,” adds Senate majority leader Bob Dole, and “we Republicans want to keep the government out of things, not get it into things.” That sounds coherent, but there’s a significant slice of hypocrisy here: Congress is largely responsible for the current horror. It long ago stacked the deck against the players by exempting baseball from the antitrust laws, protection no other U.S. business enjoys. If the G.O.P. leadership were serious about getting the government out of things, it would join the call of Senators Orrin Hatch and Pat Moynihan to partly repeal the exemption. Fat chance. Beyond “the stated reason that this should be resolved by the parties themselves,” says Senator Bob Graham, there’s also the fact “that the owners have a significant amount of political clout, and they don’t want Congress mucking around in this.”

Another reason involves credit. Clinton hoped to be a hero. He hoped, especially, to wow the white male voters he desperately needs in 1996. He failed, but at least he tried. Sure, there are more important matters before him, but if he’d settled the strike, a grateful nation would have saluted– which is exactly what the G.O.P. didn’t want. “This could have been a big victory for the President,” says Dole, “so, yes, I think there’s some politics involved.” Some? The fact, says Republican strategist Bill Kristol, is that “solving the baseball strike would be a lot better than bailing out Mexico. Clinton’s the American President, and baseball is the American pastime.”

What this country needs instead of replacement players is some replacement politicians, some statesmen who understand, as Richard Nixon once said, that “America isn’t America without baseball.”

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