Baseball Strike Is Averted

NEW YORK —  It wasn’t over until it was over, and by then, time was nearly out.

Negotiators for Major League Baseball and its players worked through the night before reaching agreement on a new labor contract Friday morning, less than four hours before players were scheduled to take the field--or not--in the first game threatened by a strike.

The Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, two teams that should benefit from cash-sharing provisions of the deal, began on schedule at 12:20 p.m. PDT after the two weary sides reached their first collective bargaining agreement without a work stoppage since 1972. The deal extends through 2006.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig called the four-year deal “historic” and said it would help ensure the health of the game.

Among other things, the agreement grants a reprieve to two teams previously condemned to elimination, the Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins. Through the 2006 season, no major league team will be forced to fold.

Team owners and Major League Baseball Players Assn. chief Don Fehr echoed Selig’s sentiment in a joint news conference near Major League Baseball headquarters on Park Avenue.

“All streaks come to an end,” Fehr said, and baseball’s skein of strikes “was one that was overdue to come to an end.”

Fans, many of whom had promised their own strike if the players walked, greeted news of the deal with slightly jaundiced relief.

“They’re both a bunch of babies,” said Beth Keith, 27, who was attending the Cub-Cardinal game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field and had nothing good to say about either side. “This was all over a luxury tax. Stupid.”

“I’m glad to be at the game,” added her friend, Jen Fitzgerald, 25, “but we were going to take the day off anyway.”

Lawyers for the two sides had bargained until about 2 a.m. Friday, after which the sides left the table for internal meetings, union sources said. There were several other early morning sessions, during which owners and players responded to counteroffers. The final economic hurdle of a luxury tax on the wealthiest teams was cleared in a meeting that lasted more than two hours.

The sides reached agreement shortly before 9 a.m.

Selig and Fehr, two of professional sport’s most powerful leaders, presided over the final session as the deal was finalized, ending talks that had resumed after the All-Star break. The deal should be ratified within a week, Selig said.

The 1994 strike lasted 232 days and wiped out the playoffs and World Series for the first time since 1904, and Selig and Fehr were determined not to travel a similar path despite their differences.

“The thing that makes me the happiest,” Selig said, “is that we can now, once again, turn our complete attention to the field.”

Fehr said he suspected the fans would rather be watching players “than watching pictures of Bud or pictures of me.”

Most players and fans had gone to bed Thursday expecting that they would awake to news of either a deal or a strike. Some players had already emptied their lockers and bought plane tickets home. By late Thursday night, however, negotiators were saying they hoped to reach an agreement by 4 a.m. PDT.

That was assumed to be the deadline--the hour at which the Boston Red Sox would need to board a bus to catch a plane to their game in Cleveland. If there was no deal, there would be no bus.

Instead, the bus was delayed while the two sides worked out the final details.

“We’re all excited and happy we got this done with,” said Atlanta Brave pitcher Tom Glavine, the National League representative to the union’s executive board. “We don’t have to go through the uncertainty of another work stoppage and what it does to the game and how it affects the fans of the game. We’re all relieved it’s behind us.”

Owners reacted similarly.

“This is incredible news for the Dodger organization, the game of baseball and all of our wonderful fans,” Chairman Bob Daly said. “This has been a season full of excitement, and I am pleased that it will be played in its entirety. We were able to work through the remaining differences and now have an agreement that will hopefully benefit everyone involved and help ensure the longevity of this great pastime.”

President Bush, a former owner of the Texas Rangers, praised the agreement through a spokesman.

“This is the time when Americans everywhere are looking forward to the pennant races heating up, they’re looking forward to the march toward the playoffs and the World Series,” said deputy White House spokesman Scott McClellan, briefing reporters in Crawford, Texas. “And the President is pleased that the American people and baseball fans everywhere will be able to continue participating in our national pastime.”

The president had called on the two sides to reach a deal in part to lift the nation’s spirits before the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Brett Butler, a former Dodger centerfielder who was involved in the 1994 strike negotiations, said he thought that played a role.

“The owners didn’t win, the players didn’t win, the fans won,” Butler told CNN. “Both sides have looked at society, at Sept. 11, at what’s going on with the stock market, and realized this is not about us anymore. This is for the fans and for the country. They had to put their differences aside and think about America.”

Management gained major concessions from the players’ association, which was concerned that a strike could cause weaker clubs to fold, costing jobs. The owners won a combination of a payroll tax and increased revenue sharing, both designed to benefit small-and mid-market teams while slowing the growth of salaries.

Players, who on Aug. 16 set the strike date, threatened to stop playing because of concern that the combination of increased revenue sharing and a stiff tax on the payrolls of high-revenue clubs would be tantamount to a salary cap.

Owners made significant concessions on economic issues and agreed to spare any major league team from elimination through at least the 2006 season, an important issue to the players, who were concerned about the loss of jobs.

Dodger outfielder Marquis Grissom praised the agreement but said he thought the players gave up more than the owners.

“It’s a win-win for all sides, but we gave a lot, and they gave a little,” he said. “For us to even get involved in a luxury tax is a huge concession on our part, but we did it. It’s going to be a very interesting four years. The owners got a big bite with drug testing, with the luxury tax, with revenue sharing, but we don’t have anything to grumble about.... I think we did a great deed for the fans.”

The sides had earlier reached agreement on random steroid testing, raising the minimum salary from $200,000 to $300,000 and improving the pension plan. That allowed negotiators to focus on the big-ticket issues. As it turned out, they needed every minute they could get.

Selig and Fehr declined to discuss details, but sources said high-revenue teams will have to share much more of their local revenue than they do now, and a tax will be levied on them to encourage spending restraint.

The amount of money transferred from the high-revenue to low-revenue clubs will increase from $169 million in 2003 to $258 million in 2006, based on 2001 revenue figures, once revenue sharing is fully implemented under a phased-in plan. The luxury tax will start in 2003 for teams with payrolls over $117 million. The figure will increase to $120.5 million in 2004, $128 million in 2005 and $136.5 million in 2006. Taxes will range from 17.5% to 40% of the amount above the threshold.

If the two sides don’t come to an agreement on a new labor contract by the expiration of this one, at the end of 2006, the bargain calls for revenue sharing and the luxury tax to continue for another year, at levels that have been predetermined but not announced.

Middle-of-the-pack teams in terms of local revenue, such as the Angels, should benefit the most under the new deal, receiving bigger infusions of cash from teams above them. The New York Yankees, in a role reversal, are the big losers.

The Yankees generate the most revenue in baseball--$242 million last year--and are the only team certain to be over the tax threshold next season. They estimate it could cost them $50 million or more. Three other teams stand a chance of reaching it--the Dodgers, Rangers and Red Sox.

In an odd confluence of interests, the union wound up on the side of the Yankees’ George Steinbrenner, whose deep pockets have helped push salaries up throughout baseball. Ultimately, though, union leaders decided the issue wasn’t reason enough to shut down the game.

“It has been a very long time since a collective bargaining agreement in baseball has been negotiated without a work stoppage,” Fehr said.

“What we can now hope for is that it will be a very long time before a collective bargaining agreement is negotiated after a work stoppage.”

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Newhan reported from New York and Reid and Landsberg from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Mike DiGiovanna, Eric Slater and Helene Elliott contributed to this report.