Strike overtures leave ominous future for MLB

We now know why the Red Sox are ahead of the Yankees in the American League East and will stay there: there isn’t going to be a World Series.

Gene Orza, the players union’s No. 2 man, said this week that while the union hasn’t “mentioned a day or date. … we have to start considering strike dates.” At the All-Star game in July, the union’s executive board will meet and probably set a date for early August.

Negotiations between the owners and players will occur before then, but there is little going on. The owners are awaiting the arbitrator’s decision on whether they can contract teams without negotiating the issue with the players. That decision should be handed down in mid-July.

If the players win that argument, it will add a highly contentious issue to the already smoldering labor negotiations. Lack of movement by the owners on labor issues is adding further grist to the players’ belief that the owners plan to reach no agreement this season, then bargain to impasse over the winter, unilaterally impose a 50 percent tax on payrolls more than $98 million, impose a 50 percent TV revenue-sharing plan on teams and leave the players union in a no-leverage situation next spring.

One thing is clear. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig wants to win the right to contract teams with no union input. He has told other owners that there are as many as six teams that could be contracted, but he would be willing to accept two.

His desire to do this has nothing to do with competitive play on the field. This is about preserving franchise values, which is what has made millionaire owners multimillionaires, and obtaining the bargaining leverage such a right would provide owners with players.

If teams begin to fold for financial reasons, the value of every franchise will be affected downward. Those values have forever been the great return on investment for owners.

If MLB must negotiate contraction with the players, the contraction process is prolonged endlessly. That could result in teams folding while negotiations are ongoing. That could be a blow for owners, even though some owners say what better way to reach the players on financial matters then to have a team go under.

If MLB can contract without negotiations, the owners would obtain an enormous bargaining chip to use in obtaining concessions in other contract areas.

There is a real possibility all this contraction talk is just positioning by the owners, through Selig, to get the players closer to the owners’ positions on salary caps and sharing of revenues among teams. Even that goal of the owners would be severely lessened if they lose the arbitration decision.

Contraction has taken on real-life proportions this year because MLB attendance is down and the number of bad teams that are not drawing fans is on the rise. Baseball’s national TV contract with Fox has been a money drag for the network. The next time around, those TV dollars are not going to be there.

No player wants to go on strike. Both the players and owners want the other side to be the bad guy in all this and, sadly, more time is being spent on the PR spin than reaching solutions.

What Orza has done in floating the “strike” word publicly, but quietly, is to begin conditioning fans for a fall without the fall classic. There is time to get a deal done, but summers are short.

Now you know why the Sox are in first place. It’s an all-new way to break a Sox fan’s heart.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.