Speaker 1: It's the best of times, it's the worst of times.
Speaker 1: As I record this, both the National Basketball Association and
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball are sidelined because of the coronavirus, but
Speaker 1: the two professional sports leagues are hardly in the same position.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, you've got basketball. NBA salaries have
Speaker 1: skyrocketed in the past five years. The average player makes
Speaker 1: above seven million dollars per season, which makes the NBA
Speaker 1: the highest paid sports league in the world. And basketball
Speaker 1: is also now the most popular sport in the largest
Speaker 1: country in the world at one point, for a billion
Speaker 1: basketball crazed people in a country and economy that's growing.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable passion that people have for the sport and
Speaker 1: for the NBA in China. And on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you've got baseball. People just don't seem to be as
Speaker 1: interested in the sport as they used to be. Last
Speaker 1: year's World Series was the least watched in history. So
Speaker 1: is this a wake up call for Major League Baseball?
Speaker 1: Kind of? The World Series continue to compete effectively last year.
Speaker 1: According to Forbes magazine, for the first time ever, the
Speaker 1: average value of an NBA team is worth more than
Speaker 1: the average value of a Major League baseball team. There
Speaker 1: are lots of reasons for this reversal of fortune, from
Speaker 1: marketing to a lack of star power to the mastery
Speaker 1: of social media. But if you had to pick one
Speaker 1: fateful moment when everything changed when baseball and basketball started
Speaker 1: to go in different directions, will might well be something
Speaker 1: that happened twenty five springs ago. That's the moment when
Speaker 1: one of baseball's worst players decided to give up on
Speaker 1: his dream rather than to be a scab during the
Speaker 1: game's worst labor strike. Minor league ball players have to
Speaker 1: give up on their dreams all the time, but this
Speaker 1: minor league ball player was not your ordinary athlete. He
Speaker 1: was also the greatest brand ambassador that the sport of
Speaker 1: basketball has ever known, and baseball's loss proved to be
Speaker 1: basketball's destiny making game. How Sean Braswell today on Flashback,
Speaker 1: a tale of one windy city and one remarkable player
Speaker 1: whose fateful decision helped alter the fate of two sports.
Speaker 1: And a very special thanks to our guest today who
Speaker 1: joined us via phone or provided their own local recordings
Speaker 1: during the global health crisis in the shelter in place order.
Speaker 1: Let's go back in time twenty nine years for a moment.
Speaker 1: It's June. If you've watched The Last Dance, ESPN's documentary
Speaker 1: film on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, then you've
Speaker 1: probably already seen this footage. The celebration house begun and
Speaker 1: the Chicago locker roll and they are celebrating your Chicago.
Speaker 1: How's the Bulls? The Lakers far? Michael Jordan and the
Speaker 1: Chicago Bulls won their first NBA championship. Five months later,
Speaker 1: just north of Chica Ago in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Twins
Speaker 1: won their second World Series Baseball championship in dramatic fashion,
Speaker 1: The Twins are gonna win the Sis the Twins, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a one nothing. Game seven of that
Speaker 1: World Series between the Twins and the Atlanta Braves was
Speaker 1: watched by fifty million viewers, double the number that watched
Speaker 1: Game seven of last year's World Series, and thirty million
Speaker 1: more than watched Michael Jordan's and the Bulls beat the
Speaker 1: Lakers that year. So Jordan's first championship might have made
Speaker 1: for a good story, but it was baseball that truly
Speaker 1: had America's attention. But behind the scenes, trouble was brewing
Speaker 1: in baseball fay Vincent, the Yale educated lawyer and the
Speaker 1: former head of Columbia Pictures, was an unusual choice to
Speaker 1: be the commissi Nerve Baseball. He was short, balding, and
Speaker 1: were large oversized classes. He looked like he should be
Speaker 1: the league's accountant, and in his first year's commissioner in nine,
Speaker 1: Vincent was tested as few commissioners have ever been. For
Speaker 1: the first time in twenty seven years, a World Series
Speaker 1: game will be played in Candle Stick Parked. The Battle
Speaker 1: of the Bay continues Game three of the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine A World Series, the Oakland Athletics against the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Giants. I'm al Michael's less than two minutes later
Speaker 1: this happening. He fails to get Dave Parker at second phase.
Speaker 1: So the Oakland a's take take. I'll tell you what happened.
Speaker 1: A six point nine magnitude earthquake hit the Bay Area
Speaker 1: right before Game three of the World Series in October nine,
Speaker 1: and I'm not all right. That's what we are. That's
Speaker 1: the greatest open in the history of television. The following day,
Speaker 1: fay Vincent addressed reporters amid the tragedy We've made the
Speaker 1: decision not to play tonight. That's the only decision we made.
Speaker 1: It's a difficult time for San Francisco and indeed for
Speaker 1: the whole Bay area. Um, the great tragedy is that
Speaker 1: could coincides with our modest little sporting event here. Vincent
Speaker 1: handled the disaster beautifully. He was reasonable, cautious, humble smart.
Speaker 1: The following season in Vincent was again tested when baseball
Speaker 1: owners started a lockout during spring training in an effort
Speaker 1: to limit rising player salaries. This is Ryan Eckert, historian
Speaker 1: at Monmouth University and author of A Game of Failure
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball strike The idea of a salary cap
Speaker 1: uh started to end to the conversation, and Vincent supported
Speaker 1: the players and being completely against the salary cap, and
Speaker 1: so very quickly he really did not ingratiate himselves to
Speaker 1: his employers, that his bosses his employers. You see, in
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball, the commissioner is handpicked by a very
Speaker 1: select hiring committee, the owners. They thought that Stave Vincent
Speaker 1: would kind of be on their side, having selected him
Speaker 1: themselves the owners, and when Vincent came in, he really
Speaker 1: acted much more in the best interests of baseball than
Speaker 1: in the interests of his employers, really, who were no
Speaker 1: one but the owners. The owners can't actually fire Vincent,
Speaker 1: but they started to put enormous pressure on him to resign.
Speaker 1: After months of controversy and speculation, baseball commissioner with faith,
Speaker 1: Vincent has bowed to management wishes that he resigned. Although
Speaker 1: the owners have not announced their plans for reorganization, it
Speaker 1: seems likely that baseball may never be the same Charlie
Speaker 1: Rose was. Right after Vincent's resignation in the owners made
Speaker 1: a more naked power grab. They installed one of their own,
Speaker 1: Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig as acting commissioner in but
Speaker 1: the owners were only getting warmed up. One of the
Speaker 1: men behind Favencin's departure was one of Bud Sealik's best
Speaker 1: friends and a fellow owner, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry
Speaker 1: Ryan Storff. And if you recognize that name, it's probably
Speaker 1: because Ryan Storff is also the owner of the Chicago
Speaker 1: Bulls had a salary caps in four. Ryan Storff wanted
Speaker 1: to apply this name principal to baseball because that was
Speaker 1: working out really pretty well for hand the owners of
Speaker 1: as the owner of the ball thanks to the salary
Speaker 1: cap in basketball, Ryan Storff paid Michael Jordan's, an all
Speaker 1: time great player at the peak of his powers, less
Speaker 1: than he paid White Sox outfielder George Bell in baseball.
Speaker 1: So at the same time Ryan Storff was helping Leeda
Speaker 1: Coup to get a salary cap in baseball, he was
Speaker 1: getting a bargain on the best player in basketball, a
Speaker 1: star who would in three deliver the Bulls their third
Speaker 1: championship in three years. The Bulls three p was an
Speaker 1: amazing accomplishment for Jordan's but he was starting to show
Speaker 1: signs of wear and tear from the immense pressure. This
Speaker 1: is Roland Lason by, a basketball writer and author of
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's The Life. The process of winning a three
Speaker 1: pet was absolutely completely, thoroughly exhausting, mentally, emotionally physical in
Speaker 1: every way, and by the summer of Michael Jordan was
Speaker 1: starting to contemplate a career change. You know, his father
Speaker 1: had long hope that Michael might consider switching over and
Speaker 1: playing some baseball. Just change up things. His father would
Speaker 1: tell him, you know, you've accomplished everything you can in basketball. Also,
Speaker 1: there was a lot up in the air, and then
Speaker 1: something happened that summer that would turn Michael Jordan's world
Speaker 1: upside down, and that would put Chicago owner Jerry Ryansdorff
Speaker 1: in the bizarre position of watching his most valuable basketball
Speaker 1: asset turned into one of his lowest performing baseball ones.
Speaker 1: Do you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from
Speaker 1: history or your own life, Please share it with us
Speaker 1: by emailing flashback at Aussie dot com. That's flashback at
Speaker 1: o z y dot com. We all need a break
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