With Major League Baseball once again in the middle of a frustrating work-stoppage, it seems like the perfect time to take a look back at one of MLB’s previous labor issues, that had a couple of Green Bay Blue Ribbons standing in the spotlight.
With billionaire owners and millionaire players once again arguing over money, one can’t help but think back to the MLB Player’s Strike of 1994, that resulted in the World Series being cancelled for the first time since 1904.
With the sides still at war in the spring of 1995, MLB owners opted to head to Spring Training using replacement players rather than cancel even more games.
In January of 1995, baseball’s executive council voted to approve the use of replacement players, with acting commissioner Bud Selig releasing a statement that read, “We are committed to playing the 1995 season and will do so with the best players willing to play.”
Three of those replacement players were members of the Blue Ribbons, as pitcher Troy Evers, outfielder Cory Schaefer and infielder Bruce Schreiber made their way to Florida in February to take part in Spring Training workouts.
Each player received a $5000 signing bonus and a daily per diem, with the potential to earn an additional $5000 bonus for making the Opening Day roster, and a pro-rated salary of $115,000 for any regular season games that they would play.
Evers, a former second-round pick of the New York Yankees, who had last pitcher professionally in the Seattle Mariners organization in 1990, signed on with the Pittsburgh Pirates, while Schaefer and Schreiber joined the Minnesota Twins.
“It’s a second chance to be a kid again,” Evers told the Green Bay Press-Gazette. “I think people will be surprised at how good the baseball will be. You won’t have the superstars like Ken Griffey, Jr. but it will be good baseball.”
When Grapefruit League play got underway on March 2nd, the very first game on the schedule featured the Pirates playing host to the Twins at their spring home in Bradenton, Florida.
In a game that may have featured Denny Neagle pitching to Kirby Puckett under normal circumstances, Evers got the starting nod for Pittsburgh, and as luck would have it, the leadoff hitter for the Twins that day was none other than his Blue Ribbons teammate, Schaefer.
Evers’ first pitch was right down the pipe for a strike, but Schaefer would get the last laugh, going 4-for-4, as the Twins beat the Pirates 6-4. “I guess Troy looked like he threw a little harder when I was out in the outfield playing behind him,” Schaefer joked. “It was pretty strange to be facing him in my first at-bat.”
Schaefer was the talk of Twins camp early on after getting off to a blistering start at the plate, and Evers established himself as one of the top arms in the Pirates rotation, with both players looking like locks to make their MLB debuts when the teams broke camp.
Unfortunately, just days before they were set to make their way from Florida, to their new homes in Pittsburgh and Minnesota, bad news came down for the replacements, when the MLB Players’ Association announced that they would be ending their strike.
On the verge of reaching the big leagues – no matter the round-about path they had taken – the replacement players were once again out of luck, and they were released from their contracts and sent home in April.
MLB’s loss was the Blue Ribbons’ gain however, as the players made their way back to Green Bay and went on to help the team win a second consecutive Wisconsin State League title, and Schaefer and Evers, who were elected to the WSL in back-to-back years in 2012 and 2013, will forever share the distinction of having been the first two players to face off during those wild and memorable 1995 Spring Training games.
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