Perspective on 2020 Season Negotiations: Only 9 Owners from 1994 MLB Strike Still Own Their Teams

History paints the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike as one of the league’s most damaging events. Thousands of fans were disenfranchised and it took several years for the game to return to its previous level of popularity, if it ever really did. Even some inside the game saw that strike as a turning point.

“I never felt the same way about baseball again after that,” Dave Stewart, a four-time 20-game winner and former General Manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, told USA TODAY Sports. “Even today, after all of my years in baseball, the passion I have for the game has never been the same. All because of that strike.”

MLB’s return from the COVID-19 shutdown could be remembered similarly if the two sides can’t agree to a path forward. Only a few weeks ago, there was industry-wide hope that owners and players would avoid acrimony with one another and fans by agreeing to a start date around the symbolic Fourth of July. Today, however, that’s been replaced by pessimism as some believe it’ll take a miracle to conduct a 2020 season.

Though at least some public blame will be placed on the players, there can be no mistake that it will rest solely on the owners. The focus on maximization of short-term profits — or minimization of losses — hurt the sport a quarter-century ago and now threatens to do the same. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this impasse is that most of these current owners won’t still be in control of their teams two decades from now.

Of the 30 owners negotiating a 2020 season, only nine owned their teams during the 1994-95 strike. The other owners sold their franchises for as much as $2 billion, which is where the real profit comes into play. Tom Ricketts recently reiterated that owning a professional sports team isn’t a way to accumulate annual cash, lamenting the “biblical” losses from a season played without fans.

But if asset appreciation is the ultimate goal, do immediate losses really matter? The owners in 1994 might not have been thinking about the health of MLB in the years and decades to come, just as the current group doesn’t appear to be looking beyond their own concerns with debt service.

One perspective on the current state of affairs with ongoing negotiations between the league and players is that the owners have the right to run their businesses as they wish. Some owners might believe canceling the 2020 season best aligns with their financial goals, so they’d just as soon not pay out additional player salaries if they can avoid it. They can probably sell for billions over the next few years, but the uncertain present might have them hedging their bets.

That leads to another reality, which is that ongoing disputes jeopardize the careers of existing MLB players and interest of current fans while also discouraging the introduction of baseball to future fans and players. MLB already has difficulty reaching younger fans. The average viewer of MLB is 53 years old, whereas the average viewer of the NBA is 36 years old. An extremely shortened, uninspiring season — or having no season at all– isn’t going to help MLB bring that age down.

At whatever point the league returns, the effects of COVID-19 on the global economy will add to MLB’s potential troubles. Fans were reluctant to return after the strike, causing financial distress for some franchises that took years to recover from. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire often receive credit for saving the sport with their entertaining home run chase in 1998, but that also happened during a time in which economic growth was strong.

What will an MLB return look like in an age of economic and cultural distress after the potential cancellation 2020 season? And keep in mind that other leagues have already announced plans to return, so this isn’t just a matter of baseball existing within its own ecosystem here. MLB owners apparently don’t see much impact on their product, which may be easier when they probably won’t own their teams 20 years from now.