Baseball was in the midst of a crisis in 1981.
In the years prior, competition for talent in larger markets had driven player salaries higher and higher. This caused owners to seek increasing restrictions on free agency. The players’ union went on strike in June, right in the middle of the season. Fans were furious, and mostly with the owners, as is the usual way of things. We still hate millionaires, of course, but we positively loathe billionaires. While the strike ended by the All-Star break in early August, work stoppages and disputes of this sort have often been the signposts of baseball’s long, slow march to obscurity against the rising juggernaut of American football and the sneaky, if uneven, popularity of basketball. It was not a riskless gamble for either party, and as future strikes taught us, the aftermath could have gone very badly.
But not this time. You see, baseball had a secret weapon to quickly bring fans back after the 1981 strike: a “short fat dark guy with a bad haircut.” His name was Fernando Valenzuela.
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