SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Alex Rodriguez and LaTroy Hawkins are the dinosaurs, the last relics remaining from baseball’s era of labor strife.

Of the 8,343 men who have appeared in the major leagues since the first walkout in 1972, they are the only active players who sat out during a work stoppage.

“Wow. Longevity,” Hawkins said one morning at spring training. “And let’s hope we’re the last to experience it.”

Baseball slogged through five strikes and three lockouts over 34 seasons through 1995, forcing the cancellation of 1,720 games and the 1994 postseason. When players and management negotiate a new labor contract to replace the deal that expires in December 2016, almost no members of the union will have personal knowledge of industrial conflict.

“A lot of players don’t really know the history, don’t know the sacrifices that were made to get them to where they are now, and think that it’s all just happened naturally,”` said Dick Moss, Marvin Miller’s top lawyer at the union from 1966-77. “There’s a lot of education that has to be done.”

Retired players who fought the battles say many of today’s big leaguers don’t understand the gains achieved and the losses incurred. The average salary has increased from $34,000 in 1992 to more than $4 million this season, and the major league minimum has risen from $13,500 to $507,500.

Players are guaranteed “first-class jet air and hotel accommodations, if practical” in their collective bargaining agreement. Since 1997, all big leaguers must be given single rooms on road trips.

“I told them that we used to have roommates on the road. They were laughing,” recalled Darren Oliver, who retired in 2013 and was the last active player from the first season of the 1994-95 strike. He said the response usually was an incredulous: “Roommates on the road?”

Hawkins and Rodriguez were caught in the strike in 1995, frozen from playing because they were on 40-man rosters. When opening day was pushed back from April 2 to April 25 and every team’s schedule cut 18 games to 144, each lost $12,111 of his $109,000 salary — then the big league minimum.

“Is he the senior member or am I the senior member in the league?” Rodriguez said with a smile in the New York Yankees clubhouse before learning he has the edge over the Rockies’ reliever. “That means I’m old.”

Rodriguez, who turns 40 this summer, made his major league debut with Seattle on July 8, 1994. He was optioned to Triple-A Calgary that Aug. 2.