Former New York Yankees and Mets pitcher David Cone is familiar with the tense situation that is happening right now between the MLB owners and the players’ association. After all, he was a union representative back in 1994.
After having a successful career, most notable for his time with the Yankees, Cone is now an analyst for the YES Network.
“What comes to mind is there’s a deadline,†Cone said. “The similarities here, the one big common denominator here is that there is a deadline, that if you don’t make a decision or come to some sort of an agreement by a certain date, then it becomes too late. And then it cannot be revived.
“That’s what happened when the World Series was canceled then, it just got to too late of a date to revive anything, and the players were out too long and there was no way that you could pick the season back up.
The former Yankees’ hurler said that the league should start relatively soon. Otherwise, the season would be in jeopardy.
“That’s the one thing I would look at now, is that you do need to get started, you need to come to some sort of an agreement because the longer it goes on, the more in jeopardy this season becomes.â€
He knows a thing or two about strikes
Between 1994 and 1995, there was a 232-day stoppage. “There was just a lack of meetings at all, a lack of dialogue, to where both sides were entrenched, and there was really nothing left to talk about at that point,†Cone remembered. “There was no way to even call a meeting to try to revive something that had a framework for an agreement.â€
Given that there is virtually no time to play a 162-game season or something close to it, and that a 40 or 50 game-season would severely damage the players’ earnings, Cone is proposing both sides meeting in the middle: 82 games and an expanded 14-team playoffs.
“I would say a fair number would be somewhere in the 82-game region,†Cone said. “If I was the commissioner that’s where I would try to start the conversation.â€
The primary issue right now, besides the coronavirus, is players’ compensation. There would be no fans in the stands so owners want to limit payroll responsibilities as much as they can.
“This one’s different,†Cone said. “There is so much hardship around the world, much less in our country, particularly in New York. There is no patience for these sorts of things going on right now; there’s no sympathy out there for either side.
“Obviously I’m always gonna be partial to the players, I believe they have a right to stand up for themselves and not be taken advantage of, but obviously these are unprecedented times.
“It calls for calmer heads and a sense of compromise on both sides.â€
New York Yankees and Mets’ fans, as well as other fanbases, are getting desperate. They want baseball back, and frustration with owners and union representatives is growing.