THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 20, 1994 TAG: 9408190098
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
COME SEPTEMBER, there will be major league baseball on TV - hours and hours of it - even if the The Great Players Strike of 1994 shuts down the season.
Public Broadcasting is at the on-deck circle and waiting to come to bat with Ken Burns' 18-hour documentary about baseball and what it means to Americans. ``Baseball'' begins at 8 p.m. Sept. 18 on WHRO.
It is every bit as compelling as Burns' 1990 miniseries, ``The Civil War.''
In Part 1 of ``Baseball,'' called ``Our Game,'' Burns shows how the acrimony between players and team owners began long before 1972, when both sides decided that not playing baseball was the way to get what they wanted.
The game has been stopped eight times in the past 22 years by labor strife.
In 1890, owners also wanted to limit players' salaries. The salary cap then was $2,500.
John Montgomery Ward, a college-educated second baseman with the New York Giants, summed up the perplexing state of the game back then with these words:
``There was a time when professional baseball stood for integrity and fair dealing. Today it stands for dollars and cents. Once the owners looked to elevate the game and present an honest exhibition of baseball. Today, their eyes are on the turnstiles. They prefer that players be bought, sold and exchanged as if they were sheep instead of American citizens.''
His words are not out of place in the 1990s.
``Baseball'' shows how the struggle for control of the game between players and owners began almost from the day it evolved into a professional sport. In the era of the Boston Beaneaters, and the original Baltimore Orioles, the players wanted what the players of today have and intend to keep - the right to work for the highest bidder for as much money as the marketplace allows.
Not only did tightfisted owners such as A.G. Spalding want to limit salaries to $2,500 a season at the turn of the century, they required players rent their uniforms. That was too much for Ward and 55 other members of the newly formed Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players.
They broke away from the National League and formed a league of their own.
After sustaining losses of $340,000, the players' league folded. To quote from Burns' documentary: ``The players who returned to the National League were left even more powerless, and with the hated reserve clause still in place.''
Is the strike good or bad for Burns and PBS?
If the players are not in uniform by Sept. 18, will PBS lose viewers who, by then, might be mad as hell and turned off by the game? Or will baseball devotees be so starved for major league baseball - even that seen in Burns' archival footage - that they will flock to ``Baseball''?
When Burns met with TV writers in Los Angeles last month, he said he was uneasy about talk of a strike. ``The last thing we want to see is a strike. We would like to be there on the air with `Baseball' when it is a thriving game.''
To promote ``Baseball'' on WHRO, Mike Sinclair has produced 90-second spots with local players of another era. Viewers will hear from former Norfolk Tars pitcher Ray White who conked the New York Yankees' great slugger, Lou Gehrig, on the head when Gehrig's team was in town for an exhibition game.
It appeared that White ended Gehrig's string of consecutive game appearances, which would reach 2,130. For years, it was assumed that nobody could surpass that standard. But in the 1990s, Cal Ripkin Jr. of the Orioles is less than 130 games away from overtaking Gehrig.
Ripkin would be extending the streak today if it were not for the strike of 1994, which has its roots in the days when John Montgomery Ward played. by CNB