Billionaires vs. millionaires.
Let's list everyone who couldn't give a damn who wins in MLB's latest shameless fight:
Doctors and nurses on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic. Business owners who had to close and lost everything. People who wonder every day how they are going to feed their family and pay their rent. Those who wait patiently in long lines at the food drops. The growing number of unemployed who spend frustrating hour after frustrating hour trying to secure their unemployment benefits.
We could do this all day.
Can we agree that virtually everybody is sickened by the indefensible greed in baseball?
I learned a long time ago to believe people are what they are by what they show you with their actions, not with their words. For years, the billionaire owners and millionaire players in baseball have shown us they care only about themselves, their profits and their paychecks. That they are doing it now, again, when so many are suffering because of a deadly virus, is unconscionable.
Can the two sides really be that blind to what is going on in the world?
Can they be that tone deaf?
The possible start of spring training 2.0 in mid-June and the regular season in early-July will be determined more by compensation for the players than it will by control of the coronavirus. The players say they agreed to a deal in March with the owners that will pay them on a prorated basis of their full salary for the games they play. The owners are saying now that their financial hit from the virus is so huge the players will have to be paid this season with a 50-50 split of the sports' revenues.
The screams you hear are coming from the MLB Players Association.
"A system that restricts player pay based on revenues is a salary cap _ period," executive director Tony Clark told The Athletic Monday.
"This is not the first salary-cap proposal our union has received. It probably won't be the last. That the league is trying to take advantage of a global health crisis to get what they've failed to achieve in the past _ and to anonymously negotiate through the media for the last several days _ suggests they know exactly how this will be received."
Do baseball fans really want to hear that?
Now?
"The players I represent are unified in that they reached an agreement and they sacrificed anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of their salaries so that the games could amicably continue," super agent Scott Boras told Sports Illustrated. "The owners represented during that negotiation that they could operate without fans in the ballpark. Based on that, we reached an agreement and there will not be a renegotiation of that agreement."
I ask again:
Do you really want to hear that?
I give more of the blame to the billionaire owners. They are getting what they deserve. After decades of ruthlessly running the game with the players having no rights, everything changed when Marvin Miller took over as union chief in the mid-1960s. By the 1970s, there was free agency. Soon, the MLBPA became the strongest, most powerful union in America. Baseball is the only major pro sport in the country without a salary cap. The average salary for players in 2019 was $4.36 million.
Good for the players.
The owners lost control of their game.
They have only themselves to blame.
But that doesn't mean the players shouldn't have to give a bit on a one-time basis in this latest fight over money. These are extraordinary times. The coronavirus is worse than anyone imagined two months ago. Everyone in every business is taking a hit. It's not as if the owners didn't give in to the players during those March negotiations. The players were granted a full year of service time even if no games are played.
The players get no sympathy from me now. I don't imagine they are getting much from you, either.
I love baseball _ it's always been my favorite sport _ but it's hard to like many of the people on either side.
This latest public fight is the last thing baseball needs. It hasn't been our national pastime for years, having been passed in popularity by the NFL long ago. I keep hearing the game is too slow for these instant-gratification times. The sport is examining every way to develop and keep younger fans who don't have the time, energy or patience to sit through a four-hour game. Commissioner Rob Manfred once described the speed-of-game issue as "dandelions," a problem that just won't go away. He and the sport's other powers are so desperate that they are willing to change the essence of the game. You know what they can do with that new three-batter rule for relief pitchers, right?
Now, sadly, there is going to be another labor fight.
I imagine the owners will buckle because that's what they always do. They will have their financial reasons, of course. Postseason television money would allow the teams to at least recoup something. Baseball, despite its many flaws, still generated a record $10.7 billion in revenue in 2019. The billionaire owners still will be billionaires after COVID-19, no matter the financial hit they take.
But if the owners don't cave, there will be no baseball in 2020. I'm convinced of that. The players will sit out the season. Everyone will lose, not just this year but in many years to follow. Good luck trying to win back what fans the game has left.
Is it just me or would that be the perfect ending to this appalling story?
