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CNN Live Today

Major League Baseball Players Consider Strike

Aired July 08, 2002 - 11:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Major League Baseball is heading into the summer All-Star break with the possibility of a players' strike. The players' union is meeting today outside of Chicago to decide on a gameplan for them. Our Jeff Flock joins us from Rosemont, Illinois, this morning. Jeff, good morning.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, good morning to you from the Rosemont Hyatt Hotel. Perhaps you see the press conference room already readied behind me. But, still, the meeting is about two hours away. And, of course, as you said, on everyone's mind, will there be a strike this year? We take you back to 1994. That was Major League Baseball's last work stoppage. It was a bad one, the worst one in history. Two hundred, thirty-two days lost of the season, and also the playoffs and World Series that year. Nobody wants to repeat that again. But that seems to be the course on which they're heading right now.

We talked about 15 or 20 minutes ago to Gene Orza, who's the No. 2 man in the Major League Player's Association. He told me that -- while he wouldn't say whether or not they intend to set a strike date today, the player reps, that he did say that he expected them to take some sort of concrete action. Wouldn't say what it was, but he said he expected when this meeting today is done in Rosemont, that they will have passed some sort of a resolution. So it's hard to say what that would be.

At the risk of having everyone's eyes glaze over, the issues, again, revenue sharing. That is the concept by which the Major League owners would begin to share some of the revenue because there's such disparity there. The owners want to share about 50 percent of their revenue. The players say they're OK with revenue sharing, but maybe less than half of that. A luxury tax, which is not a salary cap, but essentially a tax on those teams, not on players now, but on the teams that have the high payrolls, like the Yankees, with a payroll in excess of $130 million, compared to some of the other teams, like the Expos, for example, with a payroll of $100 million less than that. The notion that if you go over a certain level, you'd have to pay a tax to that and begin to share that revenue out.

The players tend not to like these principles because they fear that it would drive down salaries. So that's where we are. We'll be listening very carefully to what the players have to say after they put their heads together here, prior to the All-Star game. Daryn, that's the latest. Back to you. KAGAN: And, Jeff, the news out of this can be no news. I mean, they could meet and decide to set a strike date at a later time and not announce it today or tomorrow.

FLOCK: Yes, exactly right. They could either not announce it or -- now as in 1994 -- I mean, and this could be a little bit of a fool -- kind of a trick because they could come out of this and not set a strike date. But then in '94, that's sort of what they did as well. They didn't set a strike date at the All-Star break in '94, but then you know what happened. So even -- whatever comes out of it today, it's not necessarily going to tell us a whole lot.

KAGAN: All right. You can tell a lot of the fans out there who are a little disgusted with both the players and the owners, I can tell you that.

FLOCK: You bet.

KAGAN: Jeff Flock, in Chicago. Thank you so much.

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