the baseball strike

Baseball can be covered from any seat in the stadium. Baseball strikes are different. Access is often limited to a small handful of news outlets, which are heavily courted by both sides. The news that most of the public has mad or heard about the 1994-1995 labor dispute has been shaped primarily by The Associated Press, USA Today, The Washington Post, ESPN, and, to the chagrin of the owners, by Murray Chass of The New York Times.

Chass is considered by many to be the most informed writer on baseball's labor front. At one point during negotiations, John L. Harrington, chief executive officer of the Boston Red Sox and the owners' lead negotiator, was asked by reporters about developments in the talks. "I don't know," he said. "Let's ask Murray."

Baseball America recently named Chass among the most powerful media figures in the sport. "Editors at daily newspapers across the nation scan the news wires for Chass stories, knowing he gives readers the best insight available," the national paper reported.

From the perspective of some of the owners, meanwhile, Chass's insight is a result of a cozy relationship with the Major League Players Association. "Murray Chass is the pipeline for the union," says Philadelphia Phillies owner Bill Giles. "I'm surprised he's not on their public relations staff." Richard Levin, director of public relations for Major League Baseball, cites a September 6 column by Chass that quoted extensively from a report on baseball's economics by Stanford economist Roger Noll, a report that was sympathetic to many of the union's positions. Chass did note that for the owners, Noll's analysis "is pornography that they rate with so many X's not even adults should read it."

But "he didn't say in there that Noll is paid by the union," Levin says.

Chass points out that he had written several days earlier that Noll's report was done for the union. "I'm not sure it has to be spelled out every time it is mentioned," he says. "I do make it clear that the owners have no use for his reports. Even though he was asked to do this for the [players] association, I point out that the analysis he did previously turned out to be accurate."

Chass says owners have always resented his coverage because in the early days of the labor battles in baseball he was one of the few writers who reported the union's side. "I've had owners accusing me of this for twenty-five years," he says. "It's nothing new, and there's no more truth to it now than there ever was.

"Something the owners have never understood was that a reporter likes to get both sides of the story," he adds. "My years at The Associated Press taught me that, so I would call the union to get its side. The owners have never recovered from the union being able to present its case to the public in the newspaper."

Chass does concede that baseball union officials have been more accessible to reporters than the owners, more responsive to press questions. This may be due partly to the fact that the union uses the press to communicate with its far-flung membership.

"There's no question it's important for them to use the press," says John Helyar, a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of Lords of the Realm, which details the history of the business of the game. "It would be pretty inefficient to have a player representative from each of the twenty-eight teams have to call every player on the club to keep them informed. This way they go right to the player through the media.

"And in some respects," he says, "it does make this labor dispute harder to resolve than others because it does take place in a fishbowl."

Herb Fishgold would agree. Fishgold is a junior associate of the mediator W. J. Usery, who has helped settle strikes in many industries and who was asked by Labor Secretary Robert Reich in October to help settle this one. Fishgold found the baseball media to be less than helpful. "It was very frustrating," he says. "We would spend an hour or two trying to get rid of the statements that were made in the press. Both sides did it, and it's counterproductive. It detracts from the attention you need at the bargaining table."

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