4B
Friday, April 21, 1995
MUSIC LOVERS!
Don't Miss This!
1000s of Records • CDs • Tapes
Videos • Posters • Music Memorabilia
RARE • COLLECTIBLE • MANY ONE-OF-A-KIND
Lawrence Music Collectors' Expo Sunday, April 23, 1995 Holiday Inn, Lawrence, Kansas 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Admission $1
SPORTS UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Baseball remains in play
'95 season may be safe,'96 in jeopardy
NEW YORK — Baseball players probably won't strike again this year and wipe out the World Series. But if there isn't a new labor agreement, there's a good chance next season will be disrupted, too.
The Associated Press
"Right now, baseball is a second-
tier major sport, and that's crimi-
nal," agent Tom Reich said last
week.
Owners and players haven't met at the bargaining table since March 30, the night before U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor issued an injunction that caused players to end their strike after 232 days. Two days later, owners accepted the union's offer to return. But management hasn't wanted to return to negotiations.
"We're trying to concentrate on getting the season start," acting commissioner Bud Selig said. "Once we get the season going, I think it'll be time to go to work at working an
Some management hard-liners advocate trying to create an impasse in bargaining that would allow them to successfully impose a salary cap.
This time, Sotomayor must approve any impasse and implementation. If she does, players probably will strike either at the start of the 1966 season or at the end of the '96 regular season — after they've collected all their paychecks but before the playoffs and World Series.
agreement."
Even as they return, players are asking union head Donald Fehr if there will be a need for baseball's ninth work stoppage since 1972.
"You sort of always prepare for that, but we're focusing on restarting negotiations," Fehr said.
Owners said in court papers that the strike cost them $700 million in revenue, more than one-third the industry's projected $1.8 billion revenue for 1994. Players lost about $250 million, about one-fourth their projected earnings.
Despite the massive losses, player compensation has changed little. Last year, payrolls of active players
totaled $787,564,089. As of midweek, the total for all signed players on 40-man rosters added up to $741 million; according to management's Player Relations Committee.
That didn't include the 55 players still eligible for salary arbitration.
"Playing 1955 under the '94 rules is an extreme hardship," Selig said. "I think that's a reason you saw as many deals from small to big happen as quickly as you did."
So the average salary — about $1.17 million at the end of last season — probably will remain about the same or decrease slightly.
Kansas City traded David Cone to Toronto and Brian McRae to the Chicago Cubs. Montreal sent Ken Hill to St. Louis, John Wetteland to the New York Yankees and Marquis Grissom to Atlanta.
If the salary cap system the owners imposed had been allowed to remain in place, teams over their caps would have been forced to lower their payrolls by $56.2 million.
Puckett decides to stay with Twins
"Our view was the cap proposal would on a mandatory basis roll back salaries," Fehr said.
The Associated Press
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Puckett
Paranoia, Part II is over
Less than three years after Kirby Puckett terrified the Twin Cities by becoming a free agent and shopping himself around, he started this spring by saying he might want to leave the Twins after this season.
leave the Twins after this Rest easy, Minnesota.
Puckett now says we had him all wrong.
"It all got taken out of proportion," he said Wednesday. "I don't plan on going anywhere else."
On April 5, the first day of real spring training, Puckett said that if the Twins didn't try to field a competitive team, he might exercise an option that would let him out of his contract after this season.
Puckett, 34, will earn $5 million in base pay this season under a $30 million, five-year pact he signed late in 1992 after a highly public contract fight with the Twins.
To manager Tom Kelly, it sounded a lot like 1992, when Puckett visited several teams as a free agent. He ultimately got a richer deal from the Twins.
"Sometimes, the bigger players in the game are asked to do different things," Kelly said. "A couple of years ago, Kirby had to go on that tour. These are things that they have to do to keep the money at a certain
level."
Puckett helped the Twins to World Series championships in 1987 and '91, and he wants to play on another contender before he retires.
Two days after Puckett's remarks, the Twins offered contracts to pitcher Scott Erickson and third baseman Steve Leius.
When Erickson and Leius were tendered along with pitcher Kevin Tapani and second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, general manager Terry Ryan said owner Carl Pohlad agree to spend a few extra bucks to make the team competitive.
After that, Puckett sounded much happier than he did two weeks ago.
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