Silent Spring

Time was when the first sound of spring was the solid thwack of bat meeting ball, as major league baseball play ers gathered at sunny Southern retreats to limber up for the coming season. In recent years, that traditional ceremony has been muffled by noisy arguments about binding arbitration, boycotts and walkouts. Last year the players staged a 13-day strike that caused the cancellation of 86 regular season games. This year, just before preseason work outs were scheduled to begin, the team owners struck back by refusing to open the training camps. No ballplaying, said the moneymen -- not until the current round of collective bargaining is completed. If a solution is not reached be fore March 1, the official starting day of spring training, it would be the first time that baseball's annual spring rit ual has been delayed since the major-leaguers began going south 87 years ago.

The trouble came in two parts. The first was an offer by the owners to sub mit salary disputes to binding arbitration. Players Association Executive Director Marvin Miller dismissed that as "all propaganda, Madison Avenue stuff. You read the fine print and you find that the proposal is worthless." Among other things, he objected to the stipulation that a player cannot seek arbitration two years in a row. Explained Miller: "If the player wins arbitration one year, the next they could take it out of his hide."

The second stumbling block was baseball's notorious reserve clause, a form of indentured servitude which, at the owner's discretion, can bind a player to a team for life. The owners proposed that a player may become a free agent after five years in the majors if he is not offered $30,000 or more for his sixth season. Charging that the "owners still feel they have a divine right," Miller pointed out that most players do not last five years in the majors and that the average salary is already $32,000. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who called the owners' proposal a "spectacular breakthrough," neglected to mention that they wanted to impose the $30,000 standard for ten years. In a decade, said Miller, "you could have a minimum salary of $25,000 to $30,000." The players compromised by offering to suspend action on the reserve clause to allow a one-year study by a joint committee; the owners countered by demanding a three-year postponement. "They need three years of peace," Kuhn said wearily. "The players need three years of peace and I need three years of peace."

Support. Baseball fans, the weariest group of all, would like to see an end to the tiresome rhubarb immediately. Kuhn, the tall, imposing champion of the grand old game, and Miller, the mustachioed former economics expert for the United Steel Workers of America, are both savvy, seasoned negotiators who know the value of public support. Yet both are carelessly alienating fans at a time when the big leagues need all the gate-building help they can get. Even the players are growing restless. "If there is another strike," says Pete Rose, the $100,000 rightfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, "the Players Association won't get my support. Last year's strike cost me $7,000 and a chance for 200 hits." Added Atlanta Braves Pitcher Ron Reed: "It's the same old Mickey Mouse stuff. I don't know what's going on."

In fact, something significant finally seemed to be going on in the negotiations late last week when Miller began a series of meetings with the players by delivering a "fairly optimistic report." Nevertheless, American League President Joe Cronin cautiously added that "I wouldn't want to guess when spring training might start. We'll just keep talking." Though peace may be at hand, both the owners and the players must realize that the longer the talking goes on, the shorter grows the patience of the fans.

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