In 1994, the owners forced the players to strike by refusing to negotiate a new General Agreement and threatening to unilaterally impose their own terms on the players. This resulted in the first cancellation of the World Series in ninety years. The reputation of the game was struck a huge blow, and has yet to recover fully, as attendance figures lag.

In 1995, after a Federal judge ordered the previous General Agreement to remain in effect (the owners having unilaterally enacted their own terms during the strike and attempted to begin the 1995 season with scab players), baseball undergoes a full month of postseason games. This clever marketing scheme also resulted in a television contract which prevented fans from being able to watch all the games, should they so desire.

Eventually, a new General Agreement was reached, and some small variety of revenue sharing amongst the owners was enacted, thus ensuring that the Pittsburgh Pirates would only be outspent 5-to-1 by the Atlanta Braves, rather than 10-to-1.

Interim-Commissioner-for-Life and Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, displaying the impartiality which made him a natural for the Commissioner's job, at one point said that all he wanted was to be able to afford to keep "his players", overlooking minor legal precedents such as the Emancipation Proclamation.

In 1997, Major League Baseball implemented "interleague play", where each team would play 15 or 16 games against teams from the other league, thus ending a 90-year baseball tradition of leagues only meeting outside the regular season.

And now, the owners are discussing major realignment which could take place as soon as 1998. The rumored favorite plan would result in an American League with two divisions encompassing all East Coast teams, and a National League with a Central division and a Western division. Interleague play would result in each team playing alternate divisions from the other league in alternate years, and alternate home and away series. Therefore, whereas the Minnesota Twins had previously been visited by the Yankees (the most storied team in baseball) twice a year in the Metrodome, they would now see the Yanks once every four years. Similarly for the Astros and the Braves (the latter being the best team in baseball in this decade).

Baseball was a wildly popular and rapidly growing sport prior to the strike, but the strike (which, again the owners forced the players into) resulted in the desertion of thousands of fans across the nation. The owners, who are perennially unwilling to curb their own ability to spend (as witness huge contracts recently bestowed on Albert Belle, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and the Atlanta Braves starting rotation), are desperate to get new revenue wherever they can.

So they ask themselves: What's popular? What can draw fans? Hey, the postseason is popular! So let's add another round of playoffs. What else might be popular about the postseason? Well, it and the All-Star Game are the only times the two leagues play each other, so let's create "interleague play" so fans get more of that. And heck, having teams playing on opposite coasts all the time is a big pain for TV scheduling, so if we just realign all of baseball, then more fans will watch the game, and TV contracts will get fatter. And we'll create natural rivalries based on geographic location to help out some of the other teams. It can't fail!

The owners have forgotten the concept of supply-and-demand.

What is so special about the postseason? Well, sure, teams from different leagues face each other there and in the All-Star Game. So what? Here's so what: It doesn't happen very often! Everyone wants to see what happens when the Indians face the Braves, because we've spent all year watching these two juggernauts steamroll their leagues, and now we want to see if the Tribe's big bashers can take out the Atlanta rotation. But if they've already faced each other during the season - especially if it happens a lot during the season - who cares? The question's been answered.

And then there's this TV thing. All together now: Baseball is not football! Football teams play 16 games in a season. Even basketball teams only play a few score games. Baseball teams play 162 games per season, half of them at home. At 3 hours a game, that gives your typical fan over 240 hours to watch his team during home games in a year, plus however many they play on the road at normal hours. Sure, so the Mariners spend most of their road games starting at 4 or 5 pm, when it's hard for people to tune in. That still gives them 100-odd games at more normal hours - plus weekend games on the other coast. Exactly what do the owners think the fans are missing?

Additionally, I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and the closest Major League team to me is Commissioner Selig's own Brewers. The Brewers are not even regularly broadcast on the TV airwaves in Madison! In Boston, most Red Sox games are aired on local (non-cable) television. In order to see a Brewers game, the easiest thing for me to do is actually get in my car and drive 90 minutes (each way) to Milwaukee.

And people are whining about not being able to see on TV some inconveniently scheduled games played on a different coast? My heart bleeds.

And then there's this: One of the greatest things about baseball is all the "what ifs". What if Babe Ruth had faced Cy Young? What if Sandy Koufax had faced Reggie Jackson? What if the Braves had made it to the World Series in 1993? Baseball is not diminished by lacking answers to these questions: It's made greater by them. People talk about things like this all the time, and analyze the statistics and the situations endlessly, from every angle they can think up. Baseball is a game of "what ifs". Is providing more answers to those questions going to make baseball a better game?

That's not a "what if"; we'll find out soon enough.

I wonder what the owners will do when the fans get bored?