Even professional sports organizations are not immune from the labor-management conflict. Just as early industrial workers in Chicago and all across the industrial northeast walked out on strikes to demand better pay, baseball players had work stoppages in demand of more equitable treatment, starting from thirty years ago started. The association of MLB team owners proposed a salary cap and more revenue sharing to keep small-town ball clubs competitive, which the players rejected. Negotiations faltered, and a hard strike date was set in late July.

On this day, August 12, in 1994, after the Seattle Mariners pitcher Randy Johnson struck out Oakland’s Ernie Young at 9:45 p.m. pacific time, the baseball players officially went on a strike that would last 232 days.

Ironically for a strike brought on partly by the declining popularity of baseball, it in many ways made the situation worse. Matt Williams, the San Francisco Giants slugger, missed a chance to break Roger Maris’ single-season homerun record. After a steady rise in the early 90s, attendance declined sharply. And overall fans just felt betrayed by the league’s eighth work stoppage since 1972.