(Staudohar 5). Further angering players was the fact that their pensions, health coverage, and additional benefits would be funded out of their proposed 50% of revenues.
The strike began on August 12, 1994, when players walked off the field and would not return until eight months later. The reunion of players and owners was more a shotgun wedding ordered by a federal court judge. After months of striking, angry fans, and accusations from both camps, the strike was ended by Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s granting of the National Labor Relations Board’s request for a preliminary injunction against the team owners. The U.S. District Court Judge ordered the owners to “restore free-agent bidding, salary arbitration and the anticollusion rules of baseball’s expired collective bargaining agreement” (Verducci 3). Thus, despite the length and impact of the strike, the players and owners still had no collective bargaining agreement, mutual trust, or had established any measures to preserve the 162-game season.
Still, baseball was begun in 1995 with Major League Baseball’s national full-page advertisements that read “Welcome to the Show” (Kindred 2). Some critics of the owners and players felt the advertisement should have read “We’re Sorry; It won’t Happen Again” (Kindred 2). The short-term impact on baseball and industry profitability was great due to the strike of the 1994-1995 season which robbed fans of seeing their favorite teams who were leading their divisions when the strike began fail to have a chance for a play-off game or World Series bid. As one industry analyst stated in reference to the effects of the strike “The biggest strike ever in professional sports resulted in lost money for the owners and players and in disillusionment for the fans” (Staudohar 1
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