Owners Sign Merger, Dumbfounded by Players
The owners seem to amaze me in a stupid way. Do they not pay attention to the fans? Because I certainly don't hope they believe this, because if they do, this is hilarious. Also, the owners seem to forget they're the ones who created this problem.
The accompanying article is here.
I'll try to go through it again this evening. If anyone feels like beating me to it, please feel free.
- Hold off the Kintetsu-Orix merger for a year,
- Relax the conditions for creating a new team, and
- Revise the draft to a straight waiver system.
Of these conditions, the first one, putting the merger on ice, is the only one on which must be ironed out in order to avoid the strike. But the owners must be willing to set up negotiations on the other two conditions, something that the owners have ignored all requests about for a number of years.
In the revised document mentioned above, it basically expands on the reasons for each of the players' demands. The most compelling arguement, in my opinion, is the owners saying "we're in the read" as the reason for the merger, but nothing further to explain why they're in the read and/or how the merger will get them out of it.
The document goes on to say that this is the same when talking player contracts, i.e., the ball club says "you've done a good job, but we're in the red, so you have to take a pay cut. It can't be helped" (paraphrased quote). If I'm reading this document correctly, the players want the ball club books opened up to show where they're leaking money. Basically, the players want to know more than they're being told, and it doesn't look like they're going to accept "because we're in the red" with nothing to back that statement up any more.
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Tsutsumi-owner (Seibu) had been speaking about another merger being underway behind the scenes for the last couple of months, but that isn't to be. It was revealed that, as most people had guessed, it was between Lotte and Daiei. Apparently, the creditors in charge of Daiei's restructuring aren't in as big a rush to make changes as the Pacific League owners are to get down to four teams so that the Giants would join them. As I can tell, that was the carrot that the Pacific League teams were chasing.
So, it was decided that next year will have two leagues, six teams in the Central League and five teams in the Pacific League. Inter-league play will be discussed in the September 29th owners' meeting later this month.
The owners have partially agreed to one of the Players' concerns. They have reduced the fee for entering the league from 60-oku yen to 30-oku yen. Yes, it now costs half the impossible to join. Actually, I do understand the arguement: If you can't afford such a fee, then you can't afford a baseball team. Horie-president (Livedoor) had already stated that he had the 30-oku yen fee ready, plus how ever much he was offering to Kintetsu, so this isn't really that impossible.
Then the owners went into PR mode, criticizing the players for striking, stating that they don't understand why the players are doing this, saying that the players are letting the fans down. I guess they didn't bother to look at the 1,200,000 fan signatures in opposition to the merger, or read the polls that have between 75 and 95 percent of the fans in support of the players. What planet do these owners live on?
The owners claim that they're going to talk with a representative for the players today (September 9) and/or tomorrow to work things out. I'll post the full player demands later, I'm out of time right now.