Owners hatch plan to reopen baseball by Fourth of July. Are players on board?
As Major League Baseball slumbers through its pandemic-induced shutdown, the last few days have revealed which aspect of the operation will be the easiest and fastest to rouse.
The public relations spin machine is roaring to life and appears to be approaching its fullest capacity without missing a beat.
Reporting by USA Today and others revealed on Monday that MLB’s owners approved a plan for resuming the 2020 season which would feature an 82-game schedule, 30-man rosters with 20-man taxi squads, geographically limited play, and most notably, a 50-50 revenue sharing plan designed to minimize losses which the owners would endure as a result of playing in empty stadiums.
That news was hailed as a clarion call sounding the resumption of baseball. Suddenly we find ourselves, conceivably, one passed vote away from coming together as a country to watch baseball on the Fourth of July, offering a respite from our shared isolation and collective misery.
It is, of course, not that simple.
Union head Tony Clark told The Athletic on Monday night that, in the eyes of the players, a revenue sharing plan amounts to a salary cap. Indeed, that is the formulation upon which the NFL, NHL and NBA each rely when setting their lower and upper limits. And, as Clark points out, the players and owners came to an agreement in March which would see salaries prorated based upon games played.
To the players, the finances have already been settled.
The owners disagree, pointing to a clause which they say would allow for renegotiation in the event of games played in empty stadiums. Now, what could have been a unifying push seems likely instead to tear new divisions into the social fabric.
There are economic arguments on both sides of the dispute. Owners, to be sure, will fail to meet their revenue projections for games played without fans. Some estimates suggest that up to 50% of the revenue generated by teams comes from the gate in the form of tickets, concessions, souvenirs, and the like. There may indeed be teams for whom playing games in empty stadiums is more costly than not playing games at all.
Still, ownership has a firmer financial footing on which to stand. Forbes’s annual published list of MLB franchise valuations -- for which the methodology is, by some, disputed -- reported that 29 of the 30 professional teams hold a valuation of at least $1 billion. The outlier, the Miami Marlins, are worth a mere $980 million.
Many of the owners of those franchises have made astronomical returns on their initial investments. The Cardinals, for instance, were acquired by their current ownership group for a net purchase price of $75 million after the sale of parking garages previously owned by the club.
Forbes now estimates the team is worth $2.2 billion. That’s a tidy profit of $2,125,000,000 in 25 years, or a valuation increase of $85 million per year -- $10 million per year more than double what the game’s highest paid player, Mike Trout, makes.
Still, valuations are not liquidity, and those valuations are certain to take a dip as a result of the pandemic-related economic collapse. The owners shouldn’t be blamed for looking out for their own interests. Nor, however, should the players be scolded for not taking whatever deal they’re offered.
The wealthy professional athlete is rarely a sympathetic figure. For millions of people reliant on stimulus payments and unemployment insurance to keep a roof over their heads, to hear that players may be hesitant to play baseball for millions less than they agreed -- but still for millions -- is a tough pill to swallow.
And yet, we don’t know whether a comeback is even possible. Washington Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle took to Twitter on Monday night with a laundry list of health-related concerns which, surely, MLB will have to answer for before a resumption is a serious possibility.
I myself have myriad questions to which there are no answers. Would I be allowed to cover games? What about spring training? Would I have to be tested daily? From where would the tests be sourced? Would I be cutting the line? Can it be ethical to do so if we assume baseball’s resumption is in the national interest? How far does that thing go up my nose, anyway?
Those of us whose lives and livelihoods revolve around sports want nothing more than to see their return. Many players to whom I’ve spoken during this pause have expressed a willingness to play any time, any where, under almost any conditions.
Many of these are young, single men who are at relatively low risk for serious complications due to covid-19. They’re ready to gamble.
For now. What happens when a player gets sick? What happens when an umpire does, or a writer, or the child of a security guard? With whose lives are we willing to gamble, and who gets to decide?
MLB’s owners want you to know they have a plan for bringing you baseball. They don’t want you to know that that plan papers over weaknesses, unanswered and unanswerable questions, and rests on an economic foundation which strengthens their position in the next labor negotiation by shoehorning it into an emergency.
They know that many of the rank and file will take whatever they’re given. They know that if they’re wrong about that calculus, players will be blamed, and the PR fallout will be enormous.
You should know what they know and make your judgment with eyes wide open.
