John Thorn Quotes

We need a system where all of our teams have the opportunity to compete and to make a few dollars. That's not a bad desire for collective bargaining for a sports league, and it's great for our fans.

I am dead set against free agency. It can ruin baseball.

A lot of players know I've been around 13 years and this is my second lockout. I got a lot of respect. I know what's going on both for the league and the union.

It's not in baseball's interest or the players' interest to be taking this stance. It's the people's game.

I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.

It is time for everyone to sit down - the NCAA, the NBA, the players union and the coaching fraternity - and come up with suitable solutions to these problems.

Any professional league that goes on strike right now - that's just suicide.

The owners don't win by having a lockout. Shutting down your business is not good for anybody and it's certainly not good for the players, it's certainly not good for the fans. And that's most important to us.

And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.

The new CBA is hurting the league. It's hurting quarterback play.

I'd get rid of it, just get rid of the draft altogether. We'd just deal with the salary cap.

We didn't see [the NBA lockout] as a victory at all. It was far from what we set it out to accomplish in bargaining, but I thought it was a fair compromise.

I would be surprised if there weren't some owners who didn't want to get a deal done right now and get back to playing hockey.

When I look at our roster, I'm sure all of you have printed that I'm coming up on 35, and given my situation and my salary structure and all that, yeah, I have to wonder if this team is going to make moves and they haven't.

As I learn more and more about the six-year extension of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it's obvious to me that NFL owners understood that they were going to get a new deal done at all costs.

If the adjustment made by a court can be accepted or not, it will be refused whenever the men can gain more by continuing the strike, with whatever of violence that involves.

When the unions were fighting me 45 years ago, they could never beat me.

The people who run the game, they are the ones who want to change it and make people believe that it's different somehow. It's not different, the only difference is that some ballplayers today have a chance for a four- or five-year contract and they can make big money.

Our economics are not baseball's economics. Our game is not baseball's game. Our owners are not baseball's owners, with one or two exceptions. Our union is not baseball's union. What we do has to be crafted and suited to address hockey, to address the NHL, to address our 30 teams and our 700-plus players.

My decision leaving the Nuggets was based on the organization not saying they had the cap room to sign me.

Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules - which say that you can play while you're appealing - I don't see what anyone would be in arms about.

Once you've been around this business long enough, anything is a possibility. It's a business first and foremost. Guys play it because they love it, but it is a business, and if you don't understand that it's a business, you're lying to yourself.

The two major things that changed the makeup of all professional sports are money generated by television and courts that players went to in order to win their freedom as free agents.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we didn't have a salary cap.

The owners said that they wanted the salary cap and refused to promise that they would abide by the rules of the just-expired contract after the season ended. Believing we had no choice, the players went on strike in August of 1994.