The national pastime is hardly on its deathbed. Attendance remains near record levels and projected revenue this year is around $1.75 billion, almost tripled from 1984’s. Yet most of the game’s overlords forecast a fiscal reckoning. The annual take from the networks, now roughly $375 million from CBS and ESPN, could drop 33 percent next year. At the same time, player salaries are skyrocketing. Average pay in 1993 is $1 million and change. This balance-sheet contradiction is a perfect testament to baseball’s &ml stupidity. That’s why owners hope to replace the expiring labor deal with one that puts a lid on salaries. “Baseball cannot continue under its current system,” says Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley.
The players’ union discounts the gloom. “Nobody in any other industry would complain about what baseball calls problems,” says executive director Don Fehr. “Record revenue, few new employees, no plant or equipment that taxpayers haven’t paid for-this is a disaster?” Fair enough, but even Fehr acknowledges that an industry that produces a work stoppage with every labor negotiation could be improved. A bare majority of team owners have promised no lockout this season. While the union has said nothing about a strike, its clout would be substantial in late summer if it threatened to hold up the pennant races or the World Series.
Some of baseball’s worries are cyclical, and the recession has hurt. But most of the problems are self-inflicted. The team owners have gone seven months without hiring a commissioner, and they do a lousy job of marketing the game. Still, prognostications of demise are premature. Bill Terry, the Hall of Famer, was right 49 years ago. “Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it,” he said. “It can survive anything.
