#1994 mlb strike newspaper for free
#1994 mlb strike newspaper professional

The group acknowledges baseball played only before the 1994 season not because it was strike-shortened - but because it featured six divisions. The name, as it turned out, was a little bit misleading for my purposes. I figured if they’re anywhere, though, they’re on Facebook - and concentrated in a group some 29,000-members strong called “Baseball 1857 to 1993.” The internet is probably not the ideal place to canvass for people who are necessarily of a certain age to remember having strong opinions 25 years ago. It won’t show up in the averages or the trend analysis, but I wanted to know: Did any of the disgruntled fans keep their word? Did anyone give up baseball for good? And besides, that’s not quite what I mean. It has dropped again in recent years for a number of heavily scrutinized reasons but there was a bounce back in between. The average attendance dropped from over 31,000 per game to just above 25,000 between 19. Fans talk about how they’re never going to go to another game because it’s nothing but a big business now and not the innocent pastime it used to be when they were kids.īut they’ll go.” A community of fans who gave it up If the fans really think the stupid, greedy players are making too much money, there is a simple answer. “If fans really think the stupid, greedy owners are making too much money, there is a simple answer. Stewart, a columnist at the Daytona Daily News, tried to call their bluff. “I don’t care if they ever play anymore,” a fan named Evelyn Terry said.ĭ.L.

#1994 mlb strike newspaper for free

The Arizona Republic spoke to a Dodgers fan who said “he likely will stop watching them, even on television.” The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky spoke to a dozen fans who complained about reprehensible greed or claimed that they would play for free before concluding that, “The only way to let the players and owners know how we feel is to have the fans strike next year.” “Playing in front of an empty stadium would give players the sense of loss that a lot of fans feel, myself included,” an Orioles fan was quoted as saying.Īs interviewees in op-eds around the country, some fans went even further. Although he concluded that the logistics were likely prohibitive, the fans he spoke to were enthused at the suggestion. He imagined a single-game symbolic avoidance on the upcoming Opening Day (“whenever that may be”), reaching out to Ken Burns, labor professors, and PR professionals to gauge the feasibility of getting fans around the country on board with such a proposal. When Selig announced in mid-September that the remainder of the season, including the World Series, would be canceled, Dave Anderson wrote in the New York Times that people no longer cared about baseball.Ī month later, the Washington Post’s Kevin McManus took a semi-serious look at how a boycott could happen.

“It’s not about a game anymore,” he opined, calling on fans to “send these self-serving creeps a message.” “Fans must boycott if games return,” Bob Raissman wrote in the New York Daily News on Sept. There is a dramatic selection bias inherent in treating contemporary op-eds like reliable barometers of public sentiment but the point is, in the late summer of ’94, a few newspaper writers called on fans to stop watching baseball in the wake of the strike. Robert Martinez, left, leads a group of protesters out of the stands after the third inning of a game between the San Diego Padres and the Houston Astros in Houston, on Aug.

#1994 mlb strike newspaper professional

Even if the looming work stoppage that threatens from beyond the end of the current collective-bargaining agreement comes to pass, the experience of living through it sentiently will probably be dominated by the particularities - we’re likely looking at a preseason lockout if anything - and my professional responsibility to follow along with all the prognostication. None of which can quite capture what it feels like for there to suddenly be no baseball where baseball had just been, where you expect it to be. On the 25th anniversary, we look back at it with renewed resonance and wary relevance. The whole thing entered my consciousness as a fully contextualized historical anecdote sometime later. I probably didn’t know what the postseason was and you couldn’t have explained labor strife to me if you tried. At age 4, I was old enough to profess that I loved baseball but young enough to not actually notice when it went away. I don’t remember the year that there was no World Series.