#David Cone offers solution to save baseball season

David Cone knows firsthand how the clock can strike 12 on a baseball season and strike it out.

The YES Network analyst and former Yankee and Met was an MLBPA rep during hardball negotiations that could not prevent the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

“What comes to mind is there’s a deadline,” Cone said. “The similarities here, the one big common denominator here is that there is a deadline, that if you don’t make a decision or come to some sort of an agreement by a certain date, then it becomes too late. And then it cannot be revived.

“That’s what happened when the World Series was canceled then, it just got to too late of a date to revive anything, and the players were out too long and there was no way that you could pick the season back up.

“That’s the one thing I would look at now, is that you do need to get started, you need to come to some sort of an agreement because the longer it goes on, the more in jeopardy this season becomes.”

The intractable impasse was the final nail in the ’94 coffin, and precipitated a 232-day work stoppage that ended on April 2, 1995.

“There was just a lack of meetings at all, a lack of dialogue, to where both sides were entrenched, and there was really nothing left to talk about at that point,” Cone recalled. “There was no way to even call a meeting to try to revive something that had a framework for an agreement.”

And so MLB has been warned.

Cone, acknowledging that he is not privy to the financial details from afar, pitches a compromise plan when pressed: the sides should meet back in the middle on an 82-game season with an expanded 14-team playoffs to get the ball rolling on a deal.

“I would say a fair number would be somewhere in the 82-game region,” Cone said.

“If I was the commissioner that’s where I would try to start the conversation.”

Baseball will be severely damaged if it fails to give fans who cannot attend games but are starving for them in the midst of a pandemic and social and racial unrest.

“This one’s different,” Cone said. “There is so much hardship around the world, much less in our country, particularly in New York. There is no patience for these sorts of things going on right now; there’s no sympathy out there for either side.

“Obviously I’m always gonna be partial to the players, I believe they have a right to stand up for themselves and not be taken advantage of, but obviously these are unprecedented times.

“It calls for calmer heads and a sense of compromise on both sides.”

Cone understands why the union proposed a 114-game season, with full prorated salaries, which was rejected by the owners.

“The players want to play as many games as they can, it’s in their best interests to play as many games as possible, and to try to squeeze in as many games as you can,” he said.

It would not be without risk following a rushed spring training.

“Because there’s safety issues, not only with COVID-19, but also to squeeze that many games in a short period of time, there’s gonna be injury,” Cone said. “You certainly want to give players a chance to recover and not be beaten into the ground so to speak with a heavy schedule. There has to be a balance.”

The owners proposed an 82-game season on May 11, with players due to make the most money taking the largest salary cut, but have recently floated a 50-game season at full pro rata that would enable them to complete a full postseason before a potential second coronavirus wave hits.

“From the owners’ side of things, you certainly understand that there’s no revenues coming in,” Cone said. “We’ve always understood that a full postseason is very important from a revenue standpoint for the owners’ side.

“Even going back to the ’94 strike, that was our leverage back then knowing that there was a lot of money tied up in the postseason. That hasn’t changed.”

The public squabbling between the billionaire owners and millionaire players is a turnoff to fans at a time when the NBA and NHL are dribbling and skating forward. Cone remains optimistic.

“As long as they find a way to come to some sort of agreement, then we won’t have to worry about all the other talk about baseball shooting itself in the foot again,” Cone said.

Strike a deal. Or strike three, you’re out.