A Confederacy of Fools

By Paul A. Witteman

The time has come for a little historical perspective. Labor unrest has been as American as apple pie, hot dogs and home runs since 1636. In that benighted year, well before any of the aforementioned institutions -- including the very nation itself -- had been invented, the gentlemen who owned the fishing boats on Richmond Island, off the coast of Maine, imposed the first known salary cap. In their wisdom, they withheld all the wages of their crews for an entire year, a hardball move if ever there was one. Not surprisingly, the fishermen went on strike. Since then there have been tens of thousands of strikes that have helped shape labor law and define the compact between worker and boss. Many strikes have been bitter. Some have been brutal: 18 steelworkers were killed during a 3 1/2-month strike in 1919-20.

But no strike in the past 358 years, not one, can claim to be as ludicrous as the current work stoppages bedeviling professional sports. In baseball and hockey, multimillionaire owners have been pleading impending poverty. On the other side, players, some of whom are also multimillionaires, stamp their size 13s and demand a bigger share of the pie. It's the rich vs. the megarich in a spectacle almost as distasteful to watch as the intramurals among the wackos of the House of Windsor. If there are principles involved, and both sides swear there are, they do not make sense to anyone but the principals. To the rest of the nation, the baseball strike and hockey lockout share one characteristic: they both seem downright stupid.

Last week there was no World Series. Instead, President Clinton convened the first meeting between the feuding owners and players since the season was called off in September. Not surprisingly, no one broke into a spontaneous rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Players Association officials reiterated the union's unshakable stance in support of free agency. Owners repeated their immutable demands for a salary cap. Players Association executive director Don Fehr and interim baseball commissioner Bud Selig competed in a frowning contest for the benefit of photographers. Newly appointed mediator Bill Usery Jr. made it clear that he understands intransigence when he sees it. "When you believe you have positions that are very strong, it's difficult," he said. Settle in for a long winter, fans.

- This week the National Hockey League, fresh from a triumphant 1993-94 season and the proud owner of a new five-year, $155 million network-television contract with Fox, still finds itself in the penalty box. The regular season did not commence as scheduled; the first puck may not drop for weeks. Or months. League officials were not idle, however. They were reportedly busy hiring two bodyguards to protect N.H.L. commissioner Gary Bettman, perhaps from churlish players who in the past have proved adept at rearranging facial characteristics with sticks. Sweet reason seemed in short supply. "The owners are ready for a battle," says Boston Bruins president Harry Sinden. "There's more solidarity this time around."

National Basketball Association camps opened, and the start of the season is not under direct threat, yet to hear N.B.A. Players Association executive director Charles Grantham tell it, Armageddon is just a free throw away. Says Grantham: "We both ((owners and players)) have atomic bombs. Before we avoided using them by a pact of mutually assured destruction. But now there's a threat that we both might throw unless we negotiate."

What's left to negotiate? A salary cap is in place in the N.B.A., but players and teams seem to be able to fake their way past it with impunity. Take, for example, Anfernee Hardaway's newly renegotiated contract. Most people would! The second-year point guard, who averaged a modest 16 points last year as a rookie, just signed a nine-year contract with the Orlando Magic that will pay him an estimated $70 million. This violates no league edict but sets the stage for trouble ahead. Little wonder that the Magic owners have seen fit to raise ticket prices. The increase raises courtside seats from $60 to $95. Little wonder that Hardaway was booed lustily by the paying customers in his first game back. They were entitled. Hardaway scored 11 points, 29 fewer than the team's real star, Shaquille O'Neal. The fans have figured out who is paying for the Lamborghini Diablo Hardaway drives.

But "Penny," as Hardaway is oh so inappropriately known, seems downright modest compared with Glenn Robinson, the top pick in this summer's N.B.A. draft. Robinson's agent is seeking a 13-year deal with the Milwaukee Bucks that would pay his client $100 million. Chutzpah? This is the same agent who arranged a party after the N.B.A. draft, where for a $10 fee, friends and admirers could come and celebrate Robinson's impending wealth. That's chutzpah.

, They declined by the thousands. "No one's declaring poverty here," says N.B.A. commissioner David Stern, who nonetheless points out that four teams lost money last season. "We want to negotiate an agreement that is fair to both the owners and the players."

Which brings us to the National Football League, the paradigm of labor peace and rationality. The owners have a team salary cap. The players have free agency. "The system has worked well for players," says union executive director Gene Upshaw, who negotiated the deal. "We want the same thing as other entertainers. We want the same thing as Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and Bill Cosby, the right to sell our talent to the highest bidder."

Not so fast. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, he of the rifle arm, two Super Bowl rings and the $6 million-plus-a-year contract, thinks otherwise of the new agreement. "We were better off with the old system. This is horrible for football. It's bad for the fans. I feel bad for them. They are being robbed." Or maybe only being fleeced.

As amazing as it is to hear a star state that the fans are getting the shaft, that is not precisely the case. No one is holding a gun to the head of the spectator and forcing anyone to part with $12 to sit so far away from courtside in Orlando that O'Neal actually looks small. The Orlando Magic won't have too many empty seats this year in the expensive sections or in the very expensive sections. Baseball, if it ever gets under way in 1995, may suffer from depressed attendance. That will become clear only when moral indignation is confronted by the desire to hunker along the third-base line in the heat of a pennant race.

"It all comes down to money and greed, pure and simple," says Paul Much, senior managing director of the firm Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin, which counsels investors on opportunities such as sports. "This is about who gets a bigger share of the pie." The owners have deluded themselves into thinking the players should happily assist them in that redistribution, which violates human nature as well as labor history. Leigh Steinberg, perhaps the most powerful individual agent in professional sports, with some 150 clients under contract, agrees, "These sports are showing an incredible amount of self- destruction. This is a golden opportunity squandered. In each case, the leagues seem to have lost sight of that old proposition: the show must go on."

Not if the owners and players in baseball or hockey have anything to say about it. Since they do, it appears that the diamonds and rinks and maybe even the hardwood courts could be dark for some time to come.

With reporting by Thomas McCarroll/New York