Baseball’s club owners spent years trying to beat the players into submission and stuff free agents back into the bottle. They failed miserably in each and every attempt, batting a dismal .000, and when they finally conceded they saw that the game was good, better, in fact, than it had ever been, making more money for them and spreading the on-field wealth more widely than ever as well.

The owners, to be sure, do bizarre things, even when it’s against their own best interests, and it might be to Bud Selig’s credit that he has kept them under control since he came to the realization that labor peace is more beneficial to baseball than labor war.

But that development hasn’t stopped owners from making decisions that have other people scratching their heads and asking why.

The latest such example is …

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Whether or not other teams like it, the New York Yankees dominate talk about baseball economics. They have especially dominated it this off-season because of their stated goal of staying under a $189 million payroll for the 2014 season.

They want to do that for luxury, or competitive balance, tax purposes. I’ll get into the details of the reason for their quest later – it’s all about tax rates – but first you should know that the Yankees are losing the fight with their own payroll.

With 15 players signed for next season as this calendar year approaches its end, the Yankees’ luxury tax payroll totals $190 million. The Yankees are good at arithmetic; they can add. That’s why they have talked a lot lately about $189 million being a goal, not a mandate, set by Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing partner and son of George.

Finding it impossible to stay under $189 million and remain a serious challenger for post-season participation, they have wanted to …

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In October 2006 the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers were heading for a confrontation in the World Series, and representatives of the owners and the players were confronting each other in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement.

Commissioner Bud Selig was a participant in the labor talks, but at some point he decided it was time to leave the table. Memories about the incident seven years later do not agree on why.

“Bud was threatening to go home without an agreement. They couldn’t reach agreement on revenue sharing,” Gene Orza, the union’s No. 2 lawyer at the time, recalled.

“He was going to the World Series,” said Rob Manfred, then the clubs’ chief labor executive. “He wasn’t just leaving.”

Disagree as they might on Selig’s reason for leaving, Orza, Manfred and others agreed on who saved the day and the talks.

“They couldn’t reach agreement on revenue sharing and Tony convinced him …

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