BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…August 12, 1994, 30 years ago today:
One of baseball’s darkest hours, as Major League Baseball players go on strike, ultimately wiping out the rest of the season and—for the first time—the World Series. (The Series wasn’t played in 1904, but not due to a labor dispute.) The ordeal would last through spring training and into the 1995 season, 232 days in all—the longest work stoppage in MLB history. There were 948 games canceled. The majors became the first North American pro sports league to lose an entire postseason in such a manner.
It began when major league owners proposed a salary cap to the Players Association, claiming that small-market teams would fold if drastic measures weren’t taken. The owners had given complete power to baseball’s commissioner to guide labor negotiations. The problem was, there was no real commissioner. Faye Vincent had been forced out almost two years earlier, and Bud Selig at the time was acting commissioner. And MLB Players Association chief Donald Fehr didn’t trust Selig.
Complicating things was the fact that baseball’s Collective Bargaining Agreement had expired on December 31, 1993. In late July, Fehr rejected the owners’ offer, which included the elimination of salary arbitration and an adjustment to free agency. About three weeks into the strike, 3½ hours of negotiations proved to be fruitless, and on September 14, the end of the 1994 season became official, resulting in the loss of the loss of $580 million in ownership revenue and $230 million in player salaries.
The teams with the best records at the time were the New York Yankees and, incredibly, the Montreal Expos. Montreal fans will never forget it. The Expos had made the playoffs only once since the inception of the franchise in 1969, but they had the best record in baseball at 74-40. The top team in the American League was the New York Yankees. What a David-vs.-Goliath World Series that would have been. The Expos never came close again, and by 2005 they had moved to Washington, D.C., where they became the Nationals.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
