At a time when big-league baseball lost its way, Cardinals players got stranded and fans were abandoned.
On Aug. 12, 1994, major-league players went on strike. The season never resumed and there were no postseason games.
The Cardinals’ last game of the season was played Aug. 11, 1994, at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami against the Marlins.
With management and players showing no signs of reaching a labor settlement, the Cardinals’ front office told the players they weren’t allowed on the team’s charter flight and would have to find their own way back to St. Louis.
Lost souls
The 1994 Cardinals ended June with a 39-36 record, but went into a tailspin in July, losing 20 of 28 games.
Manager Joe Torre said his players had “a tough time concentrating” and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted the Cardinals “often seemed like lost souls.”
In a game against the Cubs, outfielders Ray Lankford and Mark Whiten let a routine fly ball fall untouched between them. “It’s something that shouldn’t happen,” Torre said. “Mental shutdowns shouldn’t happen.”
The baseball players’ union set a strike date of Aug. 12 if a settlement wasn’t reached with team owners. Some wondered whether the Cardinals were distracted by the likelihood of a work stoppage, but shortstop Ozzie Smith said, “The way we’ve been playing has nothing to do with the strike or anything else. We’ve just been playing like a bad baseball team.”
In what would be their last home game of 1994, the Cardinals lost, 9-7, to the Cubs on July 31 before 48,921, dropping their record to 47-56 before embarking on an 11-game trip to Montreal, Pittsburgh and Miami. Boxscore
No deal
On Aug. 8, 1994, Donald Fehr, executive director of the players’ union, told the Associated Press, “This doesn’t have the air of a dispute that’s going to settle.”
Richard Ravitch, chief negotiator of the baseball owners, wouldn’t make a prediction but added, “That doesn’t mean I think the fairy godmother will descend with a solution.”
The dispute focused on a salary cap, salary arbitration and player compensation. The owners wanted a salary cap and elimination of salary arbitration. The players wanted higher minimum salaries, more postseason money and preservation of the free agency system.
Cardinals general manager Dal Maxvill said, “I’m concerned. We’re not talking about apples and apples here. Or apples and oranges, or apples and bananas. We’re talking about apples and sabers.”
Hardball tactics
On Aug. 10, with a strike looking inevitable in two days, Cardinals president Stuart Meyer told Todd Zeile, the club’s player union representative, the players wouldn’t be allowed on the team charter flight to St. Louis after the series-ending game with the Marlins on Aug. 11.
“Paternalism is gone,” Meyer said. “It isn’t a friendly situation anymore. It’s a fact of life. It’s a business decision.”
Cardinals pitcher Bob Tewksbury called the ploy by Cardinals management “kind of unbelievable.”
“I can’t see any other point they’re trying to make other than, ‘We don’t care about you and we’re going to try to stick it to you,’ ” said Tewksbury.
Said catcher Tom Pagnozzi, the club’s alternate player union representative: “One thing I think this did is it unified the players a little bit more. There are some guys who are real bitter.”
Ozzie Smith said, “It’s not surprising. We’ve had to deal with it for years. Nothing has changed. The faces change, but the actions remain the same.”
Zeile and Pagnozzi arranged for the players to charter a TWA DC-9 airplane to take them back to St. Louis. They also lined up a bus to take the players from the Miami stadium to the airport and rented a truck to load the players’ equipment. Zeile said it cost $18,000 to charter the plane and the cost was split among the players, according to the Post-Dispatch.
Fitting ending
In another controversial cost-saving move by Cardinals management, catcher Erik Pappas was recalled from the minor leagues on Aug. 11 “because he makes $140,000 on a major-league contract,” the Post-Dispatch explained.
By having Pappas on the active big-league roster, the Cardinals wouldn’t have to pay him during a strike. “If the strike would last the rest of the season, the Cardinals would save about $40,000 in Pappas’ salary,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
On Aug. 11, a Thursday night, the Cardinals and Marlins played what would be their last game of the season. In the top of the eighth, with the Cardinals ahead, 8-6, “God punished everyone,” Rick Hummel wrote in the Post-Dispatch, when rain delayed the game for 1 hour, 19 minutes before crew chief Harry Wendelstedt called it off. Boxscore
When the Cardinals players arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport for their flight to St. Louis, “they could see the team’s regular charter plane preparing to take off,” the Post-Dispatch reported. Torre, coaches, staff and broadcasters were onboard the official Cardinals charter.
The next day, Aug. 12, the strike began and management permitted Cardinals players to go into Busch Memorial Stadium and clean out their lockers.
“The fans are the ones who have had to endure over and over again,” said Torre. “I hope they’ll give this thing one more chance. We’ve got to stop teasing the fans.”
The strike didn’t end until April 2, 1995, soon after U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor issued an injunction requiring baseball owners to comply with the expired collective bargaining agreement.
The first regular-season game since the strike began was played April 25, 1995, between the Dodgers and Marlins in Miami. The Cardinals opened at home the next day, April 26, versus the Phillies.
RetroSimba 
Whenever there is a strike, or even a posability of one, we see a side of the game that we would prefer not too. The strike in 1994 was a bad one, much worse than the one we had in 1981. You have to feel for Joe Torre. During his tenure here he had to work with some disadvantages and also had to deal with all the negative baggage that comes with a strike. I remember the excitement and high hopes that Pappas brought to the Cardinals his first time up. Too bad his career didn’t pan out and too bad he found himself involved in a game of politics and hard ball tactics. Just like in any regular season, 1994 had some good things taking place. Tony Gwynn was hitting over .390. Greg Maddux was pitching like it was 1968. Ken Griffey Jr. and Matt Williams had chances at hitting 60 homeruns. There is always at least one team that get’s penalised in a strike year. In my opinion that year it was the Montreal Expos. As fate would have it, in ’94 they were on pace to win 106 games. We know something about getting the short end of the stick too. In ’81, if not for the 1st half, 2nd half format that the commissioner used,Whitey might have taken us to the playoffs in his first try.
Thanks for your thoughts. Good point about Joe Torre. He and Dal Maxvill, the Cardinals’ general manager in 1994, had been union player representatives in their playing days.
Torre was a player rep with both the Braves and Cardinals. He angered Braves management by supporting the hiring of union chief Marvin Miller and working for the development of a collective bargaining agreement with owners in 1968. Braves responded by offering him a maximum pay cut, then trading him to Cardinals in March 1969. Torre was Cardinals player rep when Curt Flood challenged baseball’s reserve clause.
Maxvill was Cardinals player rep in 1972 when start of the season was delayed because of player walkout. During the season, Cardinals traded Maxvill to Athletics.
Torre told Post-Dispatch he believes his trade from Braves and Maxvill’s trade from Cardinals were because of their player rep union activities.
Todd Zeile, Cardinals player rep during the 1994 strike, was traded by Cardinals to Cubs in June 1995, two months after the strike ended.