The 1994 Players Strike Begins and Baseball Goes Dark

On August 12, 1994, Major League Baseball players walked off the job, beginning a strike that would last 232 days, cancel 948 games, and wipe out the entire postseason, including the World Series. It was the eighth work stoppage in baseball history and by far the most destructive.

The dispute centered on the owners' insistence on a salary cap. Large-market teams like the Yankees and Dodgers spent freely in the free agent market, while smaller clubs struggled to compete. Owners proposed a revenue-sharing system tied to a hard cap on player salaries. The Players Association, led by executive director Donald Fehr, refused to accept any limit on earning power and set the strike date for August 12.

The timing was devastating. The 1994 season had been one of the most exciting in memory. Tony Gwynn was batting .394 and chasing .400 for the first time since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. Matt Williams of the Giants had 43 home runs and was on pace to challenge Roger Maris's single-season record of 61. The Montreal Expos, a small-market team with a young roster, held the best record in baseball at 74-40. The Cleveland Indians were contending for the first time in decades.

All of it stopped on August 12. The last games of the season were played on August 11. On September 14, acting commissioner Bud Selig officially canceled the remainder of the season and the postseason. It was the first year without a World Series since 1904, when the National League champion Giants refused to play the American League's Boston Americans.

The strike ended on April 2, 1995, after a federal judge issued an injunction. The 1995 season began late, with a 144-game schedule. Fans were furious. Attendance dropped by nearly 20 percent in 1995, and some franchises did not recover for years. The Montreal Expos, denied their best chance at a championship, never reached those heights again and eventually relocated to Washington, D.C., in 2005.