ETĪs the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees prepared to finish their series at Yankee Stadium, Toronto players’ rep Ed Sprague showed how impassable the situation had become. No one knew for sure what would happen in the days and months ahead.Īnd because there were fans showing up and scores still being kept, no one was going to just mail the day in. Knowing what we know now, no one would have blamed Martinez for staying with his family an extra day and then letting the strike extend his paternity leave at the stroke of midnight.īut his return underscored two realities for the 20 teams who were scheduled to play on the season’s final day. He had a start to make against the Reds the next day. After flying back west for the birth, Martinez hustled back to Cincinnati on Wednesday night. Martinez’s daughter had been born a few days earlier in California. No, the cigars were for a much more common transaction. Yet Martinez and his co-workers were not celebrating the universal fortitude that would result in the cancelation of the first World Series in 90 years while also preserving their powerful union. A war chest of $175 million built from baseball card royalties was available to get them through whatever stoppage lie ahead. Major League Baseball players in 1994 were a united lot and they’d so far easily weathered the owners’ attempts to implement a salary cap. Hours before the most devastating strike in American sports history would begin, Ramon Martinez passed out cigars to teammates in the Dodgers clubhouse. (Paul Rosales/Yahoo Sports) Riverfront Stadium: Cincinnati 9 a.m. ”So, if the rest of the season is not played, I don’t think what they would have achieved in that time would dramatically impact their status coming into next year.The 1994 MLB season ended on Aug. ”There was not a lot of time left in the regular season – maybe a month and a half,” Phillips said. Phillips said the strike – even if it wipes out the remainder of the regular season, as many predict – will not delay the development or the advancement of rookies such as Jacome and Brogna. But at the same time, going back to the minors means he will continue to receive a paycheck, which probably gives him reason to smile a little bit more than if he was at home listening for news about the strike negotiations.” ”Obviously, Jason would have liked to continue to have the season play out at the major-league level. ”Now you have the situation where Brogna is not coming back down to the minors, and Jason is,” Phillips said. The strike disrupts the major-league debuts of such players as Jacome and first baseman Rico Brogna, both of whom were having great success with the Mets after mid-summer promotions from Norfolk. ”For the younger kids, this is more of a news story than an issue that affects their lives.” ”I don’t think they really understand what it means when they hear the major-leaguers say they’re doing this for the players of the future. ”I think the minor-league players are looking at it the same way the fans are – they’re just on the outside,” Phillips said. Steve Phillips, the director of the Mets’ minor-league system, said the strike has little or no effect on young prospects. We don’t have a lot of time to set up any kind of special promotions, and we generally have some sort of promotion already lined up for almost every night anyway.” ”We’re not in a position to try to capitalize on whatever opportunity this might present. ”I don’t expect any particular effect,” Rosenfield said. However, Rosenfield said he does not expect a significant increase in attendance at Harbor Park. For example, the Toledo Mud Hens are located an hour away from their parent club, the Detroit Tigers – giving displaced Tigers fans the opportunity to substitute Triple-A baseball for the majors. In certain circumstances, a major-league strike can mean increased attendance at the minor-league level. ”During that strike, ESPN – and at the time, the USA network – began carrying games, and the reaction of a lot of fans was, `Maybe there’s a lot more to this than we thought.’ There were a lot of fans who grew up in major-league markets but who now live someplace like here, and they’d never been to a minor-league game – until ’81.” ”What the strike in ’81 did was to give the minor leagues some credibility that they had not had before because of television,” Rosenfield said.
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