Baseball Strikes and Public Relations

Abstract

The baseball strikes that took place between the year 1972 till 1994 are of utmost importance and present professionals and workers with an in depth insight into how people can make or bread their image and profession by ignoring some of the basic rules of management and public relations. Management and public relations are an important part of every profession, may it be a doctor, banker, singer or sports player. Ignoring these important roles during performance of professional duties can end in a disaster and this is what happened whenever baseball player walked out of the field and refuse to play or whenever the owners locked the players out of the game. In every case there are three parties that suffer, the professional, the manage and the customer. This paper aims to cover the entire incidents of strikes, their cause and the importance of public relation in this case.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

Introduction4

Discussion4

Conclusion10

References11

Baseball Strikes and Public Relations

Introduction

The baseball strike that took place in the year 1981 is still on the mind of lot of people due to its disastrous result and unfortunate end of the game in 1994. After that Americans learned a lot of lesson and make more careful in the field of labor laws and in their dealings with labor unions. For the first time in the history of the baseball games after 1904, the World Series got cancelled as the players went on strike and the owners locked the player out of the game by playing a negative role. The action undertaken both by the player and owner was taken as something really negative and immature. Both management and players had to face huge losses. the strike cost management around 1 billion dollars while players also faced losses of millions of dollars for walking out on their fans and baseball lovers. It was one of the worst failure the largest failure of American Sport League of its time which happened for the first time in 90 years history of American sports. The after affect of this event were negative and had lasting affects on the fans and public. The continued fights and arguments between the players and the management became common and showed how unprofessional they both were. Many of the fans as a result of this event stopped following baseball and turned towards NBA and other sports that was much more professional and comfortable to watch. There were many reason behind this strike and the major one was the lack of management and public relations ethics among the management, clubs, associations and players (ESPN, 2004).

Discussion

Cutlip, Centre and Broom defines public relations as “the management function that establishes and maintain mutual benefit relationships between the organization and the public on whom it success or failure depends”. The most important part of this definition is that there has to be a mutual relationship between the organization who want public attention and the information should be beneficial to the public as they are ones whose notice ...