With a strike, we have the right to replace them and we?re not going to risk losing any games or risk our major-league partners? interest in development.

We have hired umpires to work the games. All the games will go on. Qualified umpires are going to be out on the field and we?re going to move forward.

There was a point where we were losing a lot of close games. We were right there, but we were losing a lot. The turnaround was the San Francisco game. We were basically playing for last place at the time, and we just found a way to win. It just kind of took off from there, and we just had a winning streak and rode the wave.

It's pretty bad right now. It's real frustrating to be losing all these games.

We're really just replicating the system we already had in place. We at this point have made our last, best and final offer. I don't really want to speak for our negotiating team on what they'll do in the future. That's really speculative. But we are prepared to just move forward in the system we have.

There?s a pretty good disparity between views that are primarily economic. We did reach a point where we declared impasse and imposed our last, best and final offer.