After the 232-day strike bled into the Spring, the parties involved needed to come together and discuss another pressing matter, which was the schedule for the impending 1995 season. Thanks to the baseball gods, this conversation didn’t take too long, as the players and owners came to an agreement on a syncopated 144-game schedule. While it would allow the real players time to practice with their clubs, which, on paper, would enhance the quality of the regular season contests, it was another move that irked baseball fans, particularly those who obsess over the record books and consume the product each year in a perpetual state of anticipation, hoping that one of the game’s stars would shatter a historic single-season mark. A truncated set of games meant the chances to witness history over the course of the next six months went right down the drain.
Though other major sports possess a healthy appreciation for their history books, due to its well-documented, lengthy, and sacred past, when it comes to the level of devotion for statistics, no league comes close to Major League Baseball. Whether it be George Sisler’s 257-hit record that he set in 1920, Joe DiMaggio’s godlike 56-game hit streak from 1941, or Roger Maris’ record-setting 61 home runs in 1961, with how the game was evolving, and the players who were competing, it felt like each year, barring a league-wide issue, one of these tectonic achievements could be broken. Before the first pitch was even thrown, the season, from a statistics standpoint, was marred. Not to mention how an abridged year is detrimental for an active star who has either compiled years of elite play or is off to an implausible start in his professional baseball journey. Fewer games on the calendar make it that much harder to make a run at a career record. To many enthusiasts, even prior to the season’s beginning, it felt like ’94 all over again. Though, looking on the bright side, getting to watch studs like Ken Griffey Jr., Albert Belle, Frank Thomas, and Barry Bonds, albeit in another shortened season, was better than tuning in to see a cocktail of has-beens and unproven guys. Plus, this year would come with a World Series, so no matter what, it would be better than the disaster that was the ’94 season.
The first game of the 1995 MLB season was played on Tuesday, April 25th. It featured the Florida Marlins, who hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers. To encourage fans to come to the park after the months of havoc that the league put them through, Florida decided to lower their average ticket prices from the previous season. In a game that featured replacement umpires, as the real referees of the show were locked out by the owners after requesting a pay raise in relation to the touched-upon mistreatment they had received from the league, the Dodgers won the opener, 8-7. Los Angeles’ Raul Mondesi clubbed a pair of homers in the victory. As far as attendance was concerned, a fair number of fans showed up at the ballpark, and each one of them was gifted a free Marlins checkbook cover for coming.
However, the next day, with 24 teams in action, the collective enthusiasts of the game showed their true colors. A measly 32,045 fans showed up to the park in Atlanta to watch the well-oiled Braves take on the San Francisco Giants. Having morphed into one of the premier teams in the sport, Atlanta had gotten used to playing in front of sellout crowds. For perspective, in 1994, 48,806 fans piled into Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium for the team’s home opener. Over in Kansas City, a venue that was giving out grandstand seats for free, just 24,170 people showed up. Among those who attended was a man named Bryan Kuhn, who, in the contest, caught a foul ball and proceeded to throw it back on the field, a move that generated applause from his fellow fanatics. “That was just my way of saying, ‘Hey, here’s one back at you,’” said Kuhn after returning the ball to the field of play. “I figured with all the money both sides whine about losing during the strike, they probably needed it more than I do.” The California Angels implemented an engagement strategy similar to Kansas City’s, offering up a slew of $1 tickets for their contest against Detroit. While it was reported that over 60,000 tickets were sold, more than 13,000 of the purchasers didn’t bother showing up for the action, a defiant move most likely in response to the strike.
Milwaukee drew just 31,426 supporters, their lowest opening-day mark since 1973. In the Brewers’ defense, it was in the high 40s and spitting rain, so it’s quite possible that the low attendance was linked to the weather conditions. One of those 31,426 fans expressed his displeasure for what had transpired in recent months by dumping a beer on Chicago White Sox outfielder Mike Devereaux. Over in Cincinnati, a plane flew around the sky above Riverfront Stadium hauling a banner that read, “Owners & Players: To Hell with All of You.” The airborne pennant cursed the Reds’ offense, as they would muster up just one run, a solo homer by Barry Larkin, in a 7-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs. Even the prestigious New York Yankees had 6,500 fewer fans at Yankee Stadium for the opener in comparison to the previous season.
The communal stand against the league on April 26th was representative of how the fans would engage with the product for the remainder of the season. By mid-July, it was reported that attendance across the sport was down 23 percent. Per contest, about 7,300 fewer fans were in attendance in contrast to the year prior. Even the people who prefer to cheer from their living room made their high degree of displeasure known when it was time to select the players they wanted to see compete in the annual All-Star Game. In 1994, before the strike battered the sport, 14,040,122 votes were cast for the Midsummer Classic, which was a new record. In ’95, just 5,808,000 votes were submitted, a catastrophic decline. To further measure the lack of appreciation for the game, that summer, The Harris Poll surveyed adults and asked them various questions built around their present level of interest in baseball. The results revealed that 33 percent of the participants said they followed the game with great intent, a 16 percent drop-off when compared to the findings from the previous year’s poll. Among those people claiming to be avid followers, a startling 71 percent of them said they were less interested in the game now, versus before the strike. Translation: Of the league’s keen enthusiasts, about three out of every four of them admitted that they cared less about the game than before.
As expected, this pooled shortage of care oozed into retail sales. In the days leading up to the All-Star Game, in an article published by The Reporter Dispatch, Dave Hulse, manager of the Complete Game Athlete in the White Plains Galleria Mall, said that baseball sales at his store were down 30 percent. “Baseball is dead,” said the disgruntled sporting goods store manager. “I’ve had all my football merchandise shipped early this year because I have to sell something.” Roxanne Watson, manager at a Sports Authority in Yonkers, claimed that commodities at her store that showcased the logo of the semi-pro Yonkers Hoot Owls were selling better than the bulk of the major-league team-focused merchandise.
Even though the league got the great Nolan Ryan to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, featuring an icon of the game’s past ahead of the contest wasn’t enough to get people to tune in. According to Baseball Almanac, it was the worst rating (13.9) for the Midsummer Classic in their tracking history, a database that extends back to 1967. While it should be noted that ratings don’t always tell the full story, and they aren’t always an ideal measuring stick, as the culture is ever-changing, one thing was certain: The strike of 1994 gashed the game of baseball so severely that, in real time, it was hard for even the most devoted followers to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Even the television networks were hesitant about making offers for the game’s rights. After CBS reported that they lost more than $500 million in their 4-year, $1.1 billion deal with MLB that expired in 1993, aside from their collective reluctance, when these companies tried to communicate with the league about the future, MLB made it hard. NBC and ABC were looking to refresh their six-year deal with baseball because of what played out, or, more fittingly, what didn’t play out, in 1994, but MLB refused. “Major League Baseball seems incapable at this point of living with any long-term relationships,” said ABC Sports President Dennis Swanson in response to the matter. “Whether it’s with fans, with players, with its political community in Washington, with the advertising community, or with its TV partners.” Vince Wladika, FOX Sports spokesman, also chimed in on the discussion, echoing Swanson’s frustration with the league and expressing his company’s concern with investing in its future, largely due to the fact that there was still no collective bargaining agreement between the players and owners, which left everything up in the air. Wladika noted, “No network wants to get caught in the position that ABC and NBC were in last year—no playoffs, no World Series, and no postseason revenue.”
To add insult to injury, in reference to the new CBA, at this time in July, there had been no progress made between the two parties. The last time they had even met to discuss the matter was back in March during the final days of the strike. In a matter of months, MLB had tarnished relationships with practically every arm in the industry that keeps their game going.
From an all-around interest perspective, not much changed in the latter half of the 1995 season to enrich the foremost yardsticks that had nosedived following the strike. Prior to the work stoppage ending the season in 1994, MLB was drawing an average attendance of 31,612 fans. In 1995, that number plummeted to 25,260, a 20.1 percent drop. In the retail space, sales of Major League Baseball licensed products were $1.7 billion, a noticeable drop from the strike-shortened season ($2.1 billion) and a sizable descent from the reported retail sales in 1993 ($2.5 billion). Even before the Rockies and Marlins joined in ’93, with 26 teams, the league did over $2 billion in retail sales in both 1991 and 1992. To rub more salt in the wound, those looking to promote their product or service in conjunction with MLB took a step back. According to research conducted by Chicago-based Team Marketing Report, a publisher of sports marketing and sponsorship information, advertisers spent 20 percent less in 1995, in comparison to the year prior, on ads for televised baseball events.