Which side is to blame in MLB negotiations? Both, but more one than the other
Make no mistake — there’s blame to be assigned on both sides of baseball’s labor dispute which has sprung from the chaos foisted upon the game by the coronavirus pandemic.
The owners are to be blamed for, even under the most charitable interpretation, agreeing to a hastily-drafted economic agreement which strains the bounds of their ability to operate their teams under conditions they find acceptable.
The players are to be blamed for thinking the owners would stick to their collective word and that the commissioner’s office would operate as an honest broker.
They really should know better by now.
On Saturday night, MLBPA negotiator Bruce Meyer sent a letter to MLB deputy commissioner Dan Halem in which the position of the players was made clear: There’s been no movement in negotiations and the players will not be conceding even a dollar of their prorated salaries, and so it’s time for the league to impose the conditions of a season.
The league, in turn, asserted that the Players Association “has chosen not to negotiate in good faith,” despite offering a series of additional pay cuts and truncated schedules which all amounted to essentially the same offer in terms of dollars.
Owners have decreed they will pay players a little less than a third of their full season salaries and have magnanimously offered to let players play additional games for free.
Who among us doesn’t get excited about the possibility of working unpaid overtime?
MLB’s current inexorable slog has been referred to as a squabble over money between millionaires and billionaires. As millions remain unemployed, thousands lie dead from a terrible disease, and countless more steel themselves against the tumult and raw pain eminating from American streets, the temptation to paint with a brush that broad is strong. It’s also dishonest in the way it smooths over the scale of what’s involved.
The overwhelming majority of players wrapped up in this dispute will never make so much as $1 million playing baseball. A thousand amateur players who would otherwise be readying for a summer in rookie ball are instead scrambling desperately for the dregs of a free agent market which will pay them a fraction of what they would receive in any other year. Low level minor league affiliates are preparing to be shut down and communities are readying themselves to lose the pride of a hometown team.
All the while, MLB owners agreed to a new billion dollar television contract with Turner.
Owners trying to squeeze every penny
It’s not millionaires and billionaires squabbling over money. It’s billionaires trying to figure out how to turn $1.05 into $1.10, and everyone else can figure it out for themselves.
Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt, Jr. made headlines last week when he bemoaned the relative lack of profitability which accompanies operating a baseball team. DeWitt enriched himself in part by becoming the scion of a string of Arby’s locations spread across Ohio. The profit margin of a beef n’ cheddar may be a little larger than that of a bleacher seat, but at least the latter doesn’t make you feel sick.
Or, at least, it never did before.
At almost the same time DeWitt was undercounting the 1,400 percent growth in the Cardinals’ franchise value during his ownership period, Arizona Diamondbacks chairman Ken Kendrick was conducting a similar interview in his local market. Kendrick bemoaned the lack of revenue sharing and a salary cap like those in the NHL and the NBA. Those leagues are making it work and everyone is pulling together. Why, if only the cold-hearted players could share and share alike, baseball wouldn’t be in this mess.
That ignores, of course, that those two leagues had nearly completed full seasons when the virus struck. It hand waves the long labor stoppages which were necessary to create those systems and it glosses over the reality that, agreements or no, there are no games actually occurring. It’s all happening on paper, which is to say it hasn’t yet happened at all.
Timing of public remarks coincidence? Not likely
DeWitt and Kendrick are loud, prominent voices in the game. They have the ear of the commissioner and have sway over the league’s operations. Should we believe it’s coincidence each chose to publicly stake their positions just days before negotiations disintegrated? Or, perhaps, should we suspect the owners know the commissioner made a bad deal, and they’re going to blast their way out of the corner in which they’ve been painted.
Baseball owners know no one will blame them personally. Fans may remember Jack Flaherty’s social media activity or Andrew Miller standing up as a spokesman for the union. Those same fans will frown at both sides and scowl at the mess baseball created, all while subscribing to a cable service which pays carriage fees to partner networks who in turn sign massive television contracts with teams for the rights to show the games.
The face baseball should be putting out front is that of Jordan Walker, who the Cardinals drafted in the first round of the truncated draft. Here was a young Black man beaming a smile through his computer screen into the faces of reporters he did not know, flanked by proud parents who couldn’t wait for him to start his career.
The Walkers want their son to go to college and get his degree, but they know there will be time in the future. For now, he gets to live his dream, and it’s a dream countless others have dreamt and shared over decades.
Owners could choose to stoke those dreams and let their light guide us all out of collective darkness. Instead, they snuff them out, and scrounge for pennies in the dark.
