MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has told owners that "he will be the only management spokesman on labor issues," according to Ross Newhan of the L.A. TIMES, who reported that "any owner violating the edict will be fined" $1M. By charging an expensive fine, Selig is trying to avoid the "inflammatory rhetoric" of the '94-95 labor dispute. One MLB team chair said, "Bud isn't trying to be a censor. He wants opinions, but he wants them in-house. The union doesn't have to tell the players what to do because they all sing from the same hymnal." Recently, Red Sox CEO John Harrington was fined "several hundred thousand" dollars for telling the Boston Globe, "You're not going to see a (work stoppage) happen again." Harrington was not fined $1M, as he claimed the comments were made before the January meeting but were not printed until afterward. With MLB labor talks expected to begin in late summer, Newhan wrote owners will have "their own big market-small market debates." The team chair: "If I'm Peter Magowan, for instance, and up to my eyeballs in (stadium) debt, am I going to agree to a lockout without the assurance of (financial) assistance from somewhere? Absolutely not, of course. If you're the Walt Disney Company, and you don't have any major loans and you're only looking at losing money on a cash-flow basis, would you be more agreeable to a lockout? Certainly. You may lose even less in a lockout than if your doors were open. If I'm Fox and the most important thing to me is putting broadcasting on my regional networks, would I want a lockout? Of course not. So you have all this diversity within the ownership group ... and that's why Bud wants everybody to shut up." MLBPA Exec Dir Donald Fehr said, "The whole business of regulating speech is bizarre, but they'll do what they do, as always" (L.A. TIMES, 2/18).
