Scab power

A pair of former "replacement" players, Rick Reed and Benny Agbayani, lead the Mets to victory in Game 3.

By Allen St. John

Oct 25, 2000 | Tuesday night Shea Stadium saw a little bit of baseball history. It had nothing to do with what Roger Clemens did or did not throw. Nothing to do with the Yankees' 14-game World Series winning streak coming to an end. And only a little to do with the first blemish on Orlando Hernandez's 8-0 postseason record.

At 8:37 p.m. EDT, Mets starter Rick Reed threw a fastball for a strike to Jose Vizcaino. In doing so he became the first so-called replacement player to start a World Series game. Others might simply call him a scab.

Flash back for a moment to baseball's bad old days. Six years ago this October, there was no World Series. The Fall Classic fell victim to baseball's longest and bitterest labor dispute, a players strike precipitated by the owners' illegal imposition of a salary cap. In spring training the following year, Reed, and about two dozen other current major leaguers, including teammate Benny Agbayani and injured Yankees outfielder Shane Spencer, crossed the picket line. In some places, that kind of action would earn you a pipe across the temple. It earned Reed, then a career minor leaguer with the Cincinnati Reds, a chance to play in a handful of sloppy scab games with high school coaches and vacuum cleaner salesmen. Five improbable years later, Reed was called upon to help salvage the season for the New York Mets.

"It's not surprising that he's playing," said Marvin Miller, former executive director for the Major League Baseball Players Association, only moments before the first pitch. "What's surprising is that nobody seems to care." Indeed, with the assembled media horde gnawing on the bone of a 50-large fine issued to Clemens, the silence regarding Reed was deafening. Even Donald Fehr, Miller's replacement, was diplomatic to a fault. "He's a member of the club and Bobby [Valentine] chose to start him," he said before the game. "We never say anything about who participates in games -- ever."

Miller is less circumspect. "It's about values," argues the man who helped end almost a century of indentured servitude for the players. "Once upon a time a scab was the lowest thing on earth. That's no longer the case." Indeed, it's easy to see why Reed was put in the position to cross the picket line. While real prospects like the Yankees' Derek Jeter were purposely isolated in minor league camps far from the front lines of baseball's labor war, suspects like Reed were called in to help do the owners' dirty work.

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