Here Come The Scabs

Sports fans at Harvard, I have a confession:

I'm going to spring training.

Really, I am. I swear.

Granted, they'll all be a bunch of scabs, retreads, or career minor-leaguers.

Bottom line is, though, they're playing baseball, and it's been so long since someone did that.

It won't be pretty, but it will be baseball.

Spring training is such a nice time of year. The temperature is getting warmer, the sunshine is returning, the ballfields are green and freshly mowed.

Put me in, coach, I'm ready to play.

Workouts for replacement players have started, and it appears that the season will move forward without the stars.

Incidentally, it will also go forward without major-league umpires. They've been locked out since the first of the year.

Minor-league umps, minor league players. I'm glad that they are at least playing in warm, sunny Florida.

Still, I'm going to make a prediction (which probably means it won't come true):

There will be a settlement to this silliest of strikes, and it will come soon, perhaps within the first couple of months of the regular season.

There are signs that the players are already beginning to crack.

Lenny Dykstra, facing the loss of $31,000 a day if the strike carries into the season, recently suggested that the offer made by government mediator William Usery was acceptable and that the players' union should consider it.

Didn't make too many friends with that remark, did you, Lenny? You'll probably be ducking away from the next fastball you see.

But I'll bet he's not the only one feeling the pinch.

Most of the stars stand to lose millions if the don't play. Cal Ripken's consecutive games streak, which has survived over a decade of games and one bench-clearing brawl, appears to be nearing its end.

After all, the owners have sources of income--goodness knows they don't make much off of their ballclubs.

But what can the players fall back on?

They're in the prime of their careers. They've got fat contracts for perhaps the only time in their lives. The money they make now for many of them will be the bulk of what they make in their lifetimes.

So it seems to me that the players, more than the owners, have the most to lose right now, and that some of them, including the oh-so-tactful Lenny Dykstra, have said as much.

It strikes me as being ironically appropriate: the strike started by greed will find its end in greed.

What will it take to end the strike?

Don't bank on the Senate. By the time they get around to dealing with baseball's antitrust exemption, we'll have another Democratic president.

Don't bank on Clinton. He is completely powerless to force the players back to work, and how many of the players voted for Democrats this last time around anyway?

When the players and owners met with the President, they refused to be in the same room at any time. They talked to Clinton separately.

Doesn't sound too promising on that front.

No, this one is going to end when the players feel it in their wallets and finally decide to accept some of the owners' new economic system so they get to cash in before the golden goose is slaughtered.

The strike started in the players' bankbooks, and there it will end.

But I'm still going to spring training. Scabs may be scabs, but baseball is baseball.