I’m Gen Z, born in 2003 so this was way before my time but I really want to understand the impact and the implications that took place when baseball shut down around this time, I’m aware that a generation’s love for baseball was gone but I would like to hear your guy’s thoughts and opinions.
28 comments
> A generations love for baseball was gone
What?
Was the beginning of the end for the Expos. Montreal was a juggernaut and en route to a playoff berth. When the scuttled the season, the town took it very personally.
Cost the Expos a good shot at the WS
You might find out after next season.
It almost killed baseball. The MLB lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and attendance and ratings tanked for a few years. It wasn’t until the 1998 home run race and the steroid error that people were finally interested again.
As a young Chicago kid, all I remember is it totally screwed the White Sox who had their first competitive team in a century. Would have loved a chance for vengeance against the Jays
Baseball was the most popular sport in America at the time, but was slipping to the NFL every passing year. The strike just accelerated things. The strike was also pinned on the players being greedy and not on the multi-millionaire owners being cheap.
My dad stopped watching entirely and didn’t start again until I got really into the ‘06 Tigers. Without me he probably still wouldn’t watch any games
I mean MLB has literally never been the same in terms of popularity and pop culture relevance.
There was a massive fallout.
Baseball used to be what the nfl is now. Just a money printing juggernaut that no other sport could touch in America.
It killed our Montreal Expos since they were heavily favored to win the National, at least, that year. Took a good decade + for me to get back into baseball after that. Go Jays!
While I still follow baseball, I lived and breathed it before the strike. Kid me didn’t understand any of it and I came to the conclusion that everyone was greedy and didn’t care about fans. As an adult, obviously I have a more nuanced view, but nevertheless my fandom has never approached how intense it was then.
Crushing. Changed my relationship with the sport forever.
The worst part was they missed a generational opportunity to fix the wealth disparities between the teams. If you’re going to go to the mats to regain financial control, then fix the whole system. Don’t inflict that much self harm only to merely become a slightly less fucked up caste system.
A HUGE missed opportunity!
The NHL learned from MLB’s breathtaking missteps and did fix their system when it shut down in 2005.
Ruined the Expos as a franchise. Shook the fan base of MLB to its core and it took years to recover. It was absolutely heartbreaking and made us all realize that neither side gives a damn about the fans. The fact that they’re going to do it again is stunning
Cries in Montréal
I think this question was posed yesterday, but… look up Tony Gwynn 1994. He was on a run to be the first person to finish the season batting .400 since his other San Diego counterpart, Ted Williams in 1941. Buzzkill doesn’t even begin to describe how people felt. There’s a reason whey there a beer from Ale Smith called .394, it’s to pay tribute to his “could have been” season. We’ve seen many 50+ homer seasons since then, but nothing comes close to seeing guy who looks like he literally gets a base hit every single time, to every part of the field.
Ken Burns’ Baseball and talks about 60s/70s/80s baseball with my dad got me through that year. I went right back to watching it and in ‘95 was immediately rewarded, as a Braves fan
I stopped watching and caring about baseball completely. I finally starting watching again around 2003. Then I moved to Kansas City in 2008 and went to a lot of games, especially in 2009 when Greinke won the Cy Young. My love for baseball was reignited. Then I moved to Florida in 2012 and still followed the Royals, but couldn’t watch as often. Their 2014 and 2015 runs were incredible and I loved every minute of it, but I became a father during that time and my time for following baseball kind of dried up and just sort of lost interest again around 2017. In 2022 I started playing MLB The Show 22 and my interest was piqued again. I started watching random games, and then in 2023, I got access to [mlb.tv](http://mlb.tv) through T-Mobile and have had it since. I watch most Royals games when I can and follow the Braves too. Love baseball again.
stopped being a fan for a about 20 years
I was fuckin pissed
matt williams was my favorite player
he was on pace for like 70 home runs or something
It was kinda shocking TBH. It cost the sport its undisputed spot as #1 in the USA, opened the door to other labor stoppages in pro sports, helped lead to the downfall of the Expos as well as delaying the Yankees attempt at a return to dominance (and costing their Cpt his best shot at a ring, probably helped create the steroid era as the league was desperate to recapture audiences they’d lost to other sports, maybe sped up expansion, and just generally sucked
It did irreparable damage to baseball in the American Zeitgeist that honestly the steroid era did more to repair than anyone’s ever wanted to admit.
I remember Gwynn was chasing .400
Short term? I was pissed that some of my favorite players had their seasons interrupted when they were on a tear. But long run? I wouldn’t say the effects of the strike lasted more than a few years.
I’m generally not on the side of the owners, but baseball really does need some kind of salary cap, team quality equity issues resolved.
We have more than a few MLB teams that are barely the same talent level as AAA teams.
This was maybe the fourth or fifth stoppage in 15 years, between strikes and lockouts. Until the World Series was cancelled, though, we clung to the delusion that there was more to it than money. That what was sacred about baseball would win out. That it was more than just another work fight between bosses and employees.
After the cancellation, baseball lost a lot of its magic. And remember, the next season was on the verge of not starting at all, unless an unknown circuit judge by the name of Sonia Sotomayor didn’t just rule curtly, telling both sides “grow up you guys, use the old agreement, play ball.”
It was very hard to “like” baseball after the strike.
The first real movement of the “likability” needle was Ripken breaking the Iron Man streak in ’95. The countdown of the games as he approached it with him ultimately breaking it with a lap around the field was too good of a feel good story to hold a grudge. It was a real softening of the mood between the fans of baseball and the businessmen of baseball, and MLB players union.
Baseball was dead and buried before McGwire/Sosa HR battle of 1998 saved it.
How did MLB repay them? By blacklisting them and denying them their rightful place in the Hall of Fame and instead inducting Bud Selig, who was the person most singly responsible for the called strike.
It killed the Montreal Expos, and I’m still sad. And am leaving this thread rn.
They were my NL team, and it really was the ownership that killed them. But the 94 Expos were the best team in baseball.
Tony Gwynn getting stopped just short of a possible .400 season. Matt Williams being on pace to take over Maris’s HR record. The Expos being cut down at the knees when they were likely to make a deep playoff run, if not win a pennant, and possibly a title.
It also ensured Jeff Bagwell would win an MVP award – his hand was broken by a pitch a few days before the strike. Also, Don Mattingly might have won a title – the Yankees were very good that year.