Recalling the Strike--The Notions That Stick in Your Mind

Ah, what crazy times those were! Remember? Ronald Reagan was President. . . . Postage stamps were 22 cents. . . .Sly Stallone and Pee Wee Herman were battling it out at the theater box office. . . .

It seems like only yesterday, but it was really a whole week ago today that the major league baseball players sauntered off the job, leaving the nation’s fans stranded for a whole two days.

I think all of us still recall exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news there would be no baseball that night. I have vivid memories.

It was a sizzling summer morning. Or was it overcast? Sizzlingly overcast, as I remember. I got the news on the radio, while driving on the Santa Monica Freeway. No, wait. My wife told me while I was eating breakfast, a banana dipped in coffee.

Funny how those things stick in your mind.

Anyway, it occurs to me that, these memories aside, we lack a sense of history. Here it is, the one week anniversary of The Strike, and there seems to be nothing to commemorate this remarkable event.

No vulgar T-shirts, no nostalgic newspaper stories where players and fans reminisce, no TV documentaries. No parades, festive neighborhood barbecues or fireworks.

Fortunately, it’s not too late. We still have all day to contemplate The Strike, its place in world history and its impact on all of us. Given the perspective of time, we can more clearly analyze what really happened, and what might have happened.

Certainly the economy would have suffered had the strike dragged on.

Most players had stashed away enough emergency cash to carry them through five or six lean decades of striking, but some players eventually would have had to go to work.

Why, I read about one player who actually took a job working at a McDonald’s hamburger stand. It’s obvious now what this would have led to. Customers would have flocked in to buy their burgers from a real ballplayer, touching off a war.

The Burger King down the street would have hired Dwight Gooden to work the grill. “You want fast food?” the ads would crow. “Our burgers served at 96 miles per hour!”

The corner convenience market would counter with a banner: “Seaver Serves Slurpees!”

Eventually this trend would have squeezed thousands of teen-agers out of work, causing massive economic recession, since 93% of the money spent in America is spent by teen-agers.

And most fast-food places soon would have folded, since baseball players are not the most efficient workers. They work only 2 1/2 hours a day, sit down half of that time, and spit tobacco while on the job.

But let’s not get carried away here. The strike did end, quickly, thanks to Commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

Historians still have not uncovered the secret tactics he used to bring about a settlement. One rumor is that Ueberroth resorted to reasoning. During a particularly heated bargaining session, he slipped out and hired a dump truck to back up to the negotiating table and unload a huge pile of money. Ueberroth scrambled atop the pile and said: “See? There’s enough here for all of us.”

The Strike, we realize now, represented the best and worst aspects of our country. It was heartening to see that a nation of people thought to be terminally blase could summon up such passion over a game, because that game is ours, is in our blood.

It was also scary to see billionaire owners and millionaire players make sobbing, whining appeals to the public sympathy at a time when a lot of Americans were scuffling for jobs and meals.

Polls taken since the settlement show that the fans could have survived a few weeks without baseball, but would have risen up in revolt had they been forced to watch one more night of Donald Fehr and Lee MacPhail giving negotiation updates on the evening news.

The players and owners should have had the decency to fight it out at the North Pole, with no media contact. Just go away, eat seal blubber, appeal to the polar bears for sympathy, work it all out and let us know when you’re ready to come home and play again.

Do we learn from history? Perhaps. The NFL players are on strike now, but they’re doing it quietly. A few of them have even reported to their camps, although mostly just the rookies and desperadoes who make up the sides for those exhibition scams that P.T. Barnum’s faithful fans show up for.

The real NFL players, of course, are on strike. A football season without Eric Dickerson and Dan Marino would be like apple pie without the apples.

Hunch bet: They’ll settle, these football strikers will, just in the nick of time, like in the cartoons where the locomotive screeches to a halt before squashing the damsel tied to the tracks.

Makes you wonder where reality ends and fantasy begins. Certainly, looking into the dim past, the Baseball Strike of ’85 seems hazy and unreal.

Let us, for this one day, remember The Strike. I, for instance, plan to rent the videos of “The Babe Ruth Story” and “Norma Rae,” phone old friends to discuss the Dodgers’ problems at the No. 5 spot in the pitching rotation, and submit my work expense account to arbitration.

And to remember a time when, for two dark and stormy nights--or was it warm and clear?--there was no baseball.