NEGOTIATIONS were moving ahead at a slow yet steady pace Thursday night when a familiar storm from years and decades past blew into the conference room at Major League Baseball’s offices on 245 Park Ave. and cut a furious path through the progress.
Hurricane Don made one last appearance at the proceedings.
Raging against the machine that is big-league baseball one last time, Players Association Executive Director Donald Fehr scolded the owners about their latest proposal and left his blood brother Steve Fehr and a number of other union brothers to come in and make the save.
Eleven hours after Hurricane Don’s not-so-gentle reminder that this union pushes it to the limit, Fehr reached across the table in that same conference room and shared a handshake with Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig at 11:45 a.m. yesterday and with that, a four-year temporary sanity was restored to an industry dogged by a history of self-destructive labor battles.
When did Selig know he had a deal?
“I’m a Yogi Berra theorist,” Selig answered. “When it was over, then I knew it was going to get done.”
It was that sort of negotiation, and was different from every other one since after 1969, in that it did get done before any games on the schedule were lost. Barely. The Red Sox, for one, had to wait for instructions before leaving for the airport on a bus, and even at that, they were told to wait an extra hour after what already was a nearly three-hour delay.
The final hurdle?
“It doesn’t work that way,” Fehr said.
By that, he meant as soon as one issue is put to bed, it’s reawakened if one side gives back more than it wanted to on another issue.
Still, the final two pieces to fall into place were finding the right numbers on the luxury tax and agreeing on the right date to terminate the agreement. The owners wanted it to be Oct. 31, 2006, so that they could immediately freeze free-agent signings upon the conclusion of the World Series and lift the freeze only after there is an agreement. The players wanted to have the agreement run through Dec. 31, 2006.
As a final means of appeasing the union, which dropped the thresholds on the luxury taxes much lower than they desired, the owners settled for a Dec. 19 expiration date and agreed not to contract any teams during the agreement.
By the time the deal was announced at a 1 p.m. press conference at a Midtown hotel, any ill will between the men had vanished. When Selig had trouble hearing the questions, Fehr whispered them to him in a manner a nephew would to an uncle for whom he had a particular fondness.
Neither man gushed about the particulars of the agreement.
“It was something we thought we can live with,” Fehr said, when questioned about the potential salary-dragging effects of the pact.
Selig, when asked if the agreement solves the competitive balance and financial strains on clubs that dog the game, said, “History will determine that.”
Both men were bleeding a little from what they had to surrender, which is always the sign of a successful negotiation.
The Yankees were bleeding far more than a little. The owners wanted to target the Yankees in an effort to get them to slow their spending, and they were able to succeed in doing that. George Steinbrenner, anticipating as much, has had a prominent antitrust attorney on retainer for months. He no doubt will investigate the possibility of suing baseball over the new basic agreement.
When that possibility was run past Orioles owner Peter Angelos, a hugely successful Baltimore attorney, Angelos didn’t duck the question.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is George that litigious? I don’t think that would be very successful if attempted. Hopefully, that’s not something the Yankees would contemplate doing.”
The agreement gave the Yankees a migraine and cured a great deal of headaches elsewhere.