Owners get tough, for a while

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - As the 1994 players' strike dragged into its fourth month the owners declared an impasse and imposed a salary cap on this date in 1994 - Merry Christmas! The strike had abruptly ended the season in August, and caused the cancellation of the World Series for the first time since 1904.

As Leonard Koppett described in Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball, "distrust was the central issue." As far as the owners were concerned, "players had attained a position of bargaining power that inflated salaries beyond reason." The players' position was that the owners reneged on an earlier agreement, lied about MLB's finances and were simply trying to break the union.

The strike ended in April of 1995. As the following list indicates, median salaries went down, considerably for some teams.

Team...............................1994...........1995
Detroit Tigers................$1,333,333.....$225,000
New York Yankees.........$1,312,500.....$531,000
Atlanta Braves...............$750,000.......$550,000
Chicago White Sox.........$750,000.......$775,000
Philadelphia Phillies........$750,000.......$250,000
Kansas City Royals.........$700,000.......$300,000
San Francisco Giants......$700,000.......$325,000
Boston Red Sox..............$650,000.......$282,500
Cleveland Indians...........$650,000.......$725,000
Baltimore Orioles............$637,500........$387,500
Los Angeles Dodgers......$600,000........$287,500
St. Louis Cardinals..........$587,500........$300,000
Toronto Blue Jays............$530,000........$425,000
Cincinnati Reds...............$500,000........$600,000
Texas Rangers................$475,000........$270,000
Oakland Athletics............$413,500........$235,000
Los Angeles Angels.........$400,000.........$185,000
Milwaukee Brewers.........$350,000........$158,000
Houston Astros...............$340,000........$185,000
Chicago Cubs..................$300,000........$240,000
New York Mets................$290,000........$210,000
Seattle Mariners.............$275,000........$275,000
Minnesota Twins.............$262,500........$167,500
Florida Marlins.................$230,000.......$185,000
Colorado Rockies............$224,000........$350,000
Washington Nationals.....$200,000.......$185,000
Pittsburgh Pirates...........$192,500.......$225,000
San Diego Padres...........$167,500........$200,500

But it didn't take long for salaries to skyrocket after the strike, and they've been rising ever since. In 1995, not a single team had a median salary over a million dollars. In 2010, according to USATODAY, 21 of the 30 teams had median salaries over a million. In '94 just two teams had average player salaries in excess of one million dollars. Ten years later, ten teams had players earning an average of a million or more.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
Leonard Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball
USATODAY 2010 salaries
World Series Results

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