While Congress decided to leave baseball's antitrust exemption intact for this year, management representatives started discussing how to put next season together.
Meanwhile, baseball told television officials the sport will decide in about a month whether to renew its joint venture with ABC and NBC for the 1996 season. And teams paid half of the 18 players who last week filed grievances after they were recalled from the minors and put on strike.The strike, which began on Aug. 12, became the longest in U.S. sports history today as it went through day 51, beating the 1981 midseason strike. While 712 games were canceled that year, 669 were wiped out this year, plus the postseason for the first time since 1904.
"This is an unseemly struggle," Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo, said Friday as the Senate debated the antitrust exemption for two hours. "It is ugly. It is greedy. I am appalled at the owners. I'm appalled at the players. I would really like to smack them both around."
Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, attempted to attach a partial repeal of the exemption to the District of Columbia spending bill. But he withdrew the amendment after opposition from Simpson and Sens. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and J. James Exon, D-Neb.
Metzenbaum backed down after Gramm threatened to attach an amendment regarding a Social Security tax to the baseball amendment. Legislation similar to Metzenbaum's was approved Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee.
"The 1994 baseball season for whatever reason is over. It is kaput," Exon said. "I am willing to consider in January whether we should lift the exemption baseball now has from antitrust law."
Union head Donald Fehr, speaking in Santa Fe, N.M., said players would push for the repeal when Congress reconvenes.
"If there is not a settlement (by then), spring training is not only in jeopardy, it's in dire and immediate jeopardy," Fehr said. "And I think that has a reasonable chance of getting somebody's attention."
The U.S. Supreme Court created the exemption in 1922 but said in 1972 that Congress could remove it.
"The real message today should be a wake-up call to baseball," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who sponsored the bill with Metzenbaum. "If you do not want Congress to be involved, then settle this dispute yourself."
Acting commissioner Bud Selig hailed Metzenbaum's failure, claiming the measure "would have been defeated by about a two-thirds majority in the Senate."
While the Senate was debating, a group of owners, general managers, financial officers and labor lawyers met in New York to think about 1995. The players association expects owners to declare an impasse in bargaining and impose a salary cap, causing the strike to continue.