Donald Fehr (executive director) Bud Selig (acting commissioner) Richard Ravitch (MLB owners representative) Bill Clinton (President) Sonia Sotomayor (District Court judge) William Usery Jr. (federal mediator) The 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike was the eighth and longest work stoppage in Major League Baseball (MLB) history, as well as the fourth in-season work stoppage in 22 years.

As a result of the strike, a total of 948 games were canceled, and MLB became the first-ever major American professional sports league to lose an entire postseason due to a labor dispute.

[4][5] The following day, the owners amended the Major League agreement by giving complete power to the commissioner on labor negotiations.

What arguably stood in the way of a compromise settlement was the absence of an official commissioner ever since the owners forced Fay Vincent to resign in September 1992.

Salary arbitration would have been eliminated, free agency would begin after four years rather than six, and owners would have retained the right to keep a four- or five-year player by matching his best offer.

[11] As negotiations continued to heat up, the owners decided to withhold $7.8 million that they were required to pay per previous agreement into the players' pension and benefit plans.

According to then-acting commissioner Bud Selig, September 9 was the tentative deadline for canceling the rest of the season if no agreement was reached between the owners and players.

The MLBPA offered a counterproposal to ownership on September 8 calling for a two-percent tax on the 16 franchises with the highest payrolls to be divided among the other 12 clubs.

After the 1994–95 strike was concluded without the adoption of a salary cap, the Expos decided to part ways with several of their top players[20] and the team's performance declined.

The strike also cost Matt Williams of the San Francisco Giants a chance to beat Roger Maris' single season home run record.

Seattle Mariners star Ken Griffey Jr., who led the American League with 40 home runs at the time of the strike, summed it up by saying, "We picked a bad season to have a good year.

"[24] Kevin Mitchell of the Cincinnati Reds, Julio Franco of the Chicago White Sox, and Shane Mack of the Minnesota Twins opted during the strike to play in Japan in 1995.

His hand was broken by a pitch on August 10,[27][28] just before the players' strike began; had the season continued, he would likely have missed the remainder of the year and might not have won the MVP.

But because of the timing of his "lucky break", Bagwell became just the fourth player in National League history to win the award unanimously.

The next day, the owners approved a salary cap plan by a vote of 25–3, but agreed to delay implementing it so that another round of talks with the players could be held.

[35][36] The next day, Fehr declared all 895 unsigned Major League players to be free agents in response to unilateral contract changes made by the owners.

[37] On January 10, arbitrator Thomas Roberts awarded 11 players a total of almost $10 million as a result of collusion charges brought against the owners.

On January 26, both players and owners were ordered by President Bill Clinton to resume bargaining and reach an agreement by February 6.

After the deadline passed with no compromises, the use of replacement players for spring training and regular season games was approved by baseball's executive council on January 13.

Manager Cito Gaston and his coaching staff were sent to work with minor league players, and the team announced that games featuring replacement workers would be played at their spring training facility in Dunedin, Florida.

The next day, the Maryland House of Delegates approved legislation to bar teams playing at Camden Yards from using replacement players.

MLB and the local NBC and ABC stations lost a combined $595 million in advertising revenue, and both networks announced that they would be opting out of the deal after the shortened 1995 season.

Judge Sotomayor's decision received support from a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which denied the owners' request to stay the ruling.

On September 29, 1995, a three-judge panel in New York voted unanimously to uphold the injunction that brought the end to the strike in April 1995.

The owners had appealed the injunction issued on March 31, but the panel said the Players Relations Committee had illegally attempted to eliminate free agency and salary arbitration.

The affected players include Shane Spencer of the 1998, 1999, and 2000 New York Yankees; Damian Miller of the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks; Brendan Donnelly of the 2002 Anaheim Angels; Kevin Millar of the 2004 Boston Red Sox; and Jamie Walker of the 2006 Detroit Tigers.

[55] Not only did their dream season (the best record in MLB, six games ahead of the Atlanta Braves in the NL East) end abruptly, they were forced to lower payroll and sell off their four highest-paid stars (Marquis Grissom, Ken Hill, Larry Walker, and John Wetteland) in the span of less than a week in spring training.