Now that players are marching off to spring training, the question remains whether baseball's factions can learn to walk a peaceful path.
"It has been a long process and at times it has been a tortured process," union chief Don Fehr said Monday morning, presenting details of baseball's new labor pact. "The task now, it seems to me, is to put that behind us and see if the wounds of this kind of a process can be healed as quickly as possible."Fehr and his management counterpart, Chuck O'Connor, began their briefing at 4:06 a.m. MST. In a haze of fatigue and relief, they even managed some smiles and wisecracks.
"You do it," Fehr invited O'Connor to open the briefing. "I'm too tired. You're more distinguished-looking than I am."
Later, O'Connor described how he thought an accord was reached on salary Arbitration.
"Exhaustion," he said.
It will, however, take more than wisecracks to end decades of baseball's labor strife. This lockout went 32 days and left baseball with all the dignity of urchins wrestling in the gutter.
It cost Florida and Arizona virtually all of spring training. It has also created changes in the season. Cincinnati, for example, cannot open at home, as per tradition. The Reds instead go to Houston, then open in Cincinnati April 17.
Some injuries and quirks may be viewed as results of the lockout. Even President Bush must scramble a bit to throw out the first ball.
"He wants to go" to an opening game, "but I don't know when," press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said. Bush, a former Yale first baseman who keeps his glove in a desk drawer, threw out the ceremonial first pitch last year at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. He had been scheduled to take the mound this year in Cincinnati on April 2.
The tentative plan calls for the season opener to take place April 9, with the first game starting at 11:05 a.m. MST in Boston, where the Red Sox will host Detroit. Seven other games are scheduled that day, with the rest of the openers set for the following day.
The new agreement calls for a $100,000 minimum salary, an annual $55 million contribution to the pension plan, and a compromise on salary arbitration.
No one knows yet whether the parties will be arguing again four years from now. One staffer drew chuckles Sunday evening by saying, "Our side had Italian" for dinner. The union, presumably, had Chinese.
Fehr said the new pact contains two vehicles for promoting peace. One is a study commission on the economics of the industry. Another is a formalized labor management committee to improve dialogue.
"The objective being to work out some of the difficulties and differences so that they don't have to wait every four or five years," Fehr said.
White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, a member of management's Player Relations Committee, said neither side got what it wanted.
"Neither side is incredibly happy about the terms," Reinsdorf said. "If one side is happy, and the other side isn't, then you have a bad deal."
Both sides addressed the perception that baseball involves too much greed.
"I would hope that the public wouldn't look upon this as a question of greed or a pox upon both your houses," O'Connor said. "I understand and I am a fan myself, have been all my life. There is something you feel deprived of when people who are your heroes are engaged in something other than the game they play.
"I would only suggest that the process they've been engaged in is terribly important, too, from the public standpoint."
Oakland right-hander Scott Sanderson described the process as a fight for principle, not money.
"Just because there happens to be a lot of money involved in the game of baseball, I don't believe that would change even if you cut that revenue in third," Sanderson said. "To cut it down as simply as you can, it's one side asking the other side, or both sides asking each other, to be fair with each other."
The Minnesota Twins said first workouts are set for Orlando at 1 p.m. MST Tuesday.
"They make it harder and harder to like baseball, but I still like it," Steve Alnes, a Twins fan from White Bear Lake, Minn., said.
A lot of people probably agree with him.