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1994 mlb strike full#

The Cleveland Indians traded five players to the Cincinnati Reds for future considerations that spring. The Florida Marlins, in a desperate attempt to find a shortstop, tried a truck driver, a carpenter, a high school economics teacher, a junior varsity coach, a rookie league manager and two softball players at the position.Īmong the Angels replacements was pitcher Bryan Smith, a former Dodgers minor leaguer on a leave of absence from his job as an FBI agent, and scrappy outfielder Chris Powell, a former Cal State Fullerton standout who was a slow-pitch softball teammate of mine in 1993-94.Īsked to predict the winner of a replacement World Series, Pittsburgh manager Jim Leyland said, “The team that can get the most guys out of the whirlpool and onto the field.” The replacements also brought much-needed comic relief to a sport that spent six months locked in a bitter labor dispute that threatened to destroy the game. The shoddy play exposed the experiment for the charade it was and may have helped end a 7½-month strike that forced cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

Innocence lost for girl who loved the game.

Dodgers were hitting their stride as strike hit.

Expos’ greatest season vanished overnight.

Lessons from a disastrous strike apply now.

“Replacement-player baseball,” said Bill Bavasi, the Angels general manager from 1994-99, “was definitely a blight on a lot of our careers.”īavasi, who now works for the commissioner’s office in baseball and softball development, said he had no “fond” memories of the replacement-player spring, though one play stands out.Ī look back at the 1994 major league strike. The on-field action was often farcical, a continuous blooper reel featuring over-the-hill minor leaguers and fringe prospects willing to cross picket lines for a $5,000 signing bonus, $78 per diem and the eternal scorn of real big leaguers. So read the lead to my first dispatch from Arizona in my first year as Angels beat writer for The Times, the start of a wacky six weeks of replacement-player ball that was a fantasy camp for participants, an embarrassment to coaches and executives who oversaw it and a gold mine of material for baseball writers.

1994 mlb strike full#

The left-hander who works in the car-detailing business zipped a fastball into the mitt of the Home Depot department manager, and with that the Angels’ 1995 spring training camp was in full swing.