Professional Baseball Players

13 Pages 3344 Words

n of the entire season. After a 28-0 vote among the owners, they agreed to share revenue on the condition they could get the players to accept a salary cap. The issue of revenue sharing was directly linked to the salary cap. By taking this action, the owners signaled they had come to realize the problem of disparity between big market teams (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) and small market teams (Seattle, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee). The problem, however, was that because the owners linked their revenue sharing with a salary cap, the players felt they were being asked to solve the owners’ financial disparity problem. There is a noticeable difference in team payrolls, as displayed in 1993, when the the payroll of the Toronto Blue Jays was $48.4 million, compared with San Diego Padres’ payroll of only $10.6 million (Layden 17).
Therefore, the idea of revenue sharing, wherein big market teams would transfer monies to the small market teams, was a good one, but it caused disputes among the owners as to how the formula would be worked out. Not all of the small market teams were in bad shape financially. In fact, some that had built or were building new stadiums such as Baltimore, Cleveland, and Texas were doing quite well. It was not until June 14, 1994, that the owners finally presented their collective bargaining proposal, 18 months after they voted to reopen the contract. The owners proposed a 7-year contract that would split their total revenue with the players, 50-50, while introducing a salary cap over the next four years (Dolan 26). The players had been making tremendous gains in wages through free agency, and they did not want to see that trend come to an end. Provided that revenues did not fall, the players would be guaranteed no less than $1 billion in pay and benefits scheduled for 1994. The proposal also eliminated salary arbitration, but allowed players with 4 to 6 years of major league service to become free agents (compared w...