Time is right for fan strike Jim Kearney THE SPECTATOR THIS iS how it used to be in the bad old days of profes- sional sport, before players’ unions, agents and lawyers got into the act: When a player had an exceeding- ly fine season, his club would plead poverty and offer him a 10% pay cut. if he was eloquent enough and the team really needed him, he would talk the boss out of the pay cut, play for exactly the same dollars he earned the previous season and con- sider himself fortunate. The average wage was so bad, even at the major league fevel, most players had to find off-season jobs as laborers and tnick drivers in order to make ends meet. For many prairie boys in hockey, the most important thing in their careers was to get home in time for spring planting on V4e ara ars, OR ATIon Ss ye the family farm. Where North Van's Paul Kariya is merely the latest example of a player getting more than a million bonus just to turn pro, players of yes- teryear routinely got a happy hand- shake and maybe a couple of hun- dred bucks. The great Gordie Howe got even less from the Detroit Red Wings: a team windbreaker. Team loyalty — in other words, total subservience ~~ was a basic requirement. In the old six-team NHL, the owners liked players who were dumb and uneducated. Example: when Eric Nesterenko, then with the Toronto Maple Leafs, started attending the University of Toronto in his spare hours, manager and part-owner Conn Smythe con- sidered this a disloyal act. He promptly traded him to Chicago, in those days the farthest possible NHL city from the U of T campus. Before expansion from that old six-team setup started, there was no waiver rule. If in some way a player offended his kindly boss, or if there was no room for him on a well- stocked roster, a player could be buried forever on a minor league farm team. He didn’t have to be made available to all other teams in the league before being sent down to play for much smaller dollars. This is how it used to be. It helps explain, perhaps, why the pendulum has swung so far to the other side; why baseball is on strike and why the coming hockey season likely will not last longer than the training camps and the exhibition game schedule. Logic would dictate that some- where down the road, the opposing parties might find a happy medium. But when did logic ever have any- thing to do with professional sport? Logic goes out the window when greed comes through the door. Once upon a baseball, a football or a puck, the owners had it all their way. The pre-season exhibition schedule virtually paid for the entire regular season. They ran a gravy train which the players have hijacked. And they refuse to give it back. Neither side deserves your sym- pathy. Nor do the fans who pay exor- bitant prices to support the entire pro sport structure. If they don’t mind having their pockets picked, that's their choice. Nobody is twisting their arms. They aren't compelled to attend gamvs. . After all, use real world now wor- ships at the shrine of the market economy: get it while you can, while the getting is good. If the market doesn't tolerate artificial restraints, such as legislated salary caps, why should pro sport? Really, it’s up to the suckers, oth- erwise known as the paying cus- tomers, to provide pro sport with a reality check. Player strikes and employer lockouts accomplish noth- ing lasting. Take baseball. Please. Eight strikes in 22 years and it still doesn’t have an answer. But a customer strike? That's the ticket. In all sports. If they start the season and there are no backsides in the seats? What then? Maybe a sud- den attack of common sense. On both sides. 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