Sports Illustrated proposed a thorough, if summary, compromise with regard to many of the issues that players and owners could not agree on: the elimination of arbitration in exchange for unrestricted free agency for 3-year veterans, establishing a middle ground between the owners' demand of free agency only after four years and the player's dislike of arbitration; also in the SI proposal were stipulations such as giving a luxury tax a three-year trial period for all parties to decide if it was in their best interest to keep.

Even solutions such as those proposed by the everyday baseball fan, such as "split profits 50/50" or other simplistic ideas could have been considered as options; instead, owners and players held fast to their positions and did not introduce new ideas to the negotiating arena, effectively ensuring that no progress would be made unless one side was a clear loser and one...
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