Five Lessons From The 1994 MLB Strike, As Another One Looms
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- Tony Gwynn was hitting .394 when the Aug. 12, 1994 strike began, losing his shot at becoming the first .400 hitter since Ted Williams in 1941; he said in retirement, 'I think I would have hit .400.'
- Fifty-seven players never played another major league game after August 1994, with 19 suiting up for the final time on the day the strike began; Harold Reynolds, then 33, couldn't find a job in spring 1995 and was released by the Rockies the day before opening day.
- Buck Showalter, managing the Yankees during the 1995 replacement-player spring, called it 'the worst time of my career,' while Sparky Anderson boycotted the entire exercise — Showalter's takeaway: 'Don't try insulting the fans by trying to pass that off as big league quality baseball.'
- Gene Orza, the MLBPA's former general counsel, said star players like Cal Ripken, Dave Winfield, Eddie Murray, Kirby Puckett and Orel Hershiser showed 'an unheard-of level of solidarity' in 1994, but Kurkjian notes that solidarity may be harder to sustain today as players 'make more so much money' and have individual social media platforms.
- The Montreal Expos were 74-40 when the strike hit — the best record in baseball — and Felipe Alou said 25 years later that a finished season would have kept the franchise alive: 'That really was the end of baseball in Montreal.'
- Minor leaguer F.P. Santangelo was the only one of roughly 200 players in the Expos' camp to leave rather than play in replacement games; manager Felipe Alou honored his word and called him up on Aug. 2, 1995, with Santangelo arriving at the clubhouse at 12:30 p.m. for a 7 p.m. game.
Why it matters: The CBA expires Dec. 1 and owners are demanding a salary cap, putting the 2027 season at risk of cancellation. The 1994 strike cost 57 players their careers, robbed Tony Gwynn of a .400 chase, and helped kill baseball in Montreal — a playbook of avoidable damage that today's larger, richer, more isolated player base may be less equipped to navigate.
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