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When mom and dad keep fighting, it’s the children who suffer. In the ongoing battle between Major League Baseball and the Players Association, children are all normal people who work in and around the sport.
In two weeks, a typical organization will send some 75 people to Arizona or Florida, which is closer to Mike Trout’s barber salary than Mike Trout’s. All of these people – sports coaches, club attendants, media relations staff – have been stranded for three months, unable to sign spring training leases, largely ineligible to be vaccinated at this time, wondering if they would be sent to COVID hotspots as cases remain high.
They will, as it turns out no one can agree on whether there should be 10 playoff teams or 14. The feuds lasted most of the winter, and that left us here: there There will be no agreement to postpone the start of the season until more people can be vaccinated. Instead, spring training will begin, as provided for in the collective agreement, on February 17th.
Most of the blame here falls on the league. The union can be intransigent, but it is not legally bound to renegotiate things already covered by the CBA. The league’s labor lawyers know this. Yet they continued to send out union proposals peppered with what the union sees as a poison pill: extended playoffs.
The real money for the owners comes in the form of October TV rights, so they crave that structure. The players’ position is that widening the playoffs will dilute competitiveness and take away wages: if you can make the playoffs with 85 wins, why would you sign a free agent for a big price? They agreed to a 16-team format last year, with the aim of recouping some of the money lost without ticket sales and as a safety solution in case the top teams fail to emerge at the end of the 60. matches. But the union spent the offseason insisting it was a one-time concession.
The league’s latest proposal offered a one-month delay in spring training; a 154-game season for which players would receive their entire 162-game salary; a 14-team playoff; and a designated universal hitter. On Monday, after the union refused – and refused to make a counter-offer – the MLB issued a statement that said, in part: “On the advice of medical experts, we proposed a one-month delay. before the start of spring training. and the regular season to better protect the health and safety of players and support staff. … It was a good deal that reflected the best interests of everyone involved in the sport by simply shifting the season schedule back a month for health and safety reasons.
If health and safety is really the priority, why submit a proposal that you know the union will not accept? If health and safety is really the priority, why not just focus on the timing and leave the petty financial wrangles for the next negotiations, which will come when the CBA expires in December? (Indeed, if health and safety is really the priority, why play baseball in the midst of a global pandemic? But this ship has sailed.)
The truth is, this is not really the case. The priority is, as always, to further enrich the rich to the detriment of the less rich.
Of course, the season – and with it, spring training – is expected to start a month later. Cases of COVID have started to decline and every time another arm is stung, the world becomes slightly safer. There’s no moral argument to ship thousands of people to hotspots right now, where they’ll immediately head to restaurants (with both states allowing indoor dining) and add to the workload. If the league just came up with this delayed season with full pay and ruled out the playoffs, we could get ready for spring practice in mid-March right now.
Instead, the equipment trucks are heading south. Players will join them soon. The same will be true for the hundreds of people who are not represented by a union; who receive COVID tests less frequently than gamers; some of which are classified as part-time employees and are therefore not covered by the team’s health insurance plans. All of them will get into cars or board planes and prepare to risk their lives because a group of adults could not get a Zoom call and make the right decision. And when they get to the camp, do you know who won’t be there? The owners of the team.
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