Tony Clark is either going to come out of COVID-19 looking for work or have a greatly strengthened hand when he sits down to lead the Major League Baseball Players Association in the next round of collective bargaining.
Clark, the executive director of the MLBPA, is going to have his tactical and leadership abilities tested as he and commissioner Rob Manfred and their lieutenants work their way toward some kind of resumption of baseball this summer. Seeing the sides stub their toes over the amateur draft was disappointing in that it appears as if management decided to re-work a previous agreement stemming from the initial stoppage of spring training due to the pandemic.
True, some re-working was likely needed since the earlier agreement was based on the assumption that fans would be in attendance once the games resumed. By most accounts, that won’t be the case, at least initially, so it stands to reason that management would endeavour to seek some relief for a lack of revenue. But, geez: let’s get real, here: the issue that needs addressing is how much of a hair-cut each side is willing to take without the 35-50 per cent of team revenue that will be lacking without paid admissions and if they can’t agree on a draft — bearing in mind that drafted players aren’t even members of the MLBPA right out of the gate — how difficult will it be to get agreement on pro-rated salary adjustments?
The goal of every league and its players association at this time is to get all the financial components and side-agreements in place so that when public health officials sound the all-clear no time is wasted in getting the show on the road. The NHL, in comparison to baseball, seems to have its act together which is a stunner to anybody who just assumes that anything accomplished by Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr must be borne out of conflict. The timing of the entry draft is something that will be worked around, and our Chris Johnston thinks that far from creating fissures this negotiation could spur a wider collective bargaining agreement.
These next two weeks are crucial for baseball. While formal plans for re-starting have not been presented, three concepts have been floated that have their own peculiar logistical and emotional hurdles. The most recent that seems to have caught the fancy of players — particularly those who were reluctant to commit to draconian isolation — involves divisional realignment and the use of home parks without fans. The idea is to create something as close as possible to the norm, but it flies in the face of the idea that limiting movement is of paramount importance as a means of controlling exposure.
New Sports on Pause Podcast!@donnovanbennett and @richarddeitsch are joined by Scott Boras to discuss how COVID-19 has impacted the business of baseball and what @borascorp is doing to help its clients with mental health right now.
LISTEN: https://t.co/550k5hAF0j pic.twitter.com/zBWz9h8hX9
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 4, 2020
Baseball is under pressure, here. There’s little doubt President Donald Trump believes he can use sports to add to the backdrop of normality; plus, let’s face it: it’s hard to run all those gigantic rallies that feed Trump’s base while professional teams are forced to play behind closed doors. If you don’t believe this is how the big, orange vacuum of his brain works, you haven’t been paying attention.
But you know who’s really under pressure: Clark, who in his first, big, CBA test was essentially snookered by commissioner Rob Manfred and his negotiating team. That’s how it was painted in the media, it’s the view of many current and former players and, truth be told, many on the ownership side, too.
It’s not entirely fair to blame it on Clark, because he follows the lead of membership and he pays people to negotiate with him. And let’s be clear: the truth is that once Fehr and Gene Orza managed to stick a stake through the heart of a salary cap during the labour wars of the 90s, major league players have seen ownership chip away at their position of predominance.
Part of that has been the tides of economics and a cultural shift in both the ranks of players and owners. Players are much more comfortable financially now than at any point in history and are part of the monied elite that routinely uses loopholes to maximize the amount of money they can keep. Always a conservative group, they have never skewed to the right as much as they do now.
As for ownership? Not only is the current group smarter and more nuanced than their predecessors — the departure of Bud Selig as commissioner, his replacement by Manfred (who was his chief labour negotiator,) and the diminished status of owners such as Jerry Reinsdorf who tried to bludgeon their way through negotiations has been key in that regard — but they’ve also understood that sometimes the best thing to do is get out of their own way. If you shut up, maybe the players won’t notice that the luxury tax can function as a salary cap.
Clark is a smart guy, but he is no Fehr or Michael Weiner — the latter of whom would still be running things if it was not for his death from brain cancer. Weiner and Manfred had a foot in both of the game’s recent labour eras and had an understanding that each of them needed to make their constituents happy. Memories of the game’s steroid scandal created a sense of informal partnership. The simple truth is that once ownership decided there was no need for war every time out, they found common cause with a well-functioning and engaged players association.
Yet here we are: they haven’t even come around to issues like who gets paid how much or liability or privacy issues surrounding testing for COVID-19 and they’ve already got their backs up. It’s the wrong time to go for a win… or try to avenge a defeat. It’s true that nobody ever bargained for a pandemic, let alone has negotiated through one. But here we are. The current CBA expires after 2021 but it’s looming over the current crisis.
QUIBBLES AND BITS
• Hammering the CFL is easy when you live in Southern Ontario, especially in and around Toronto. And while I’m not going to carry water for any league, I do find it rich the reaction to the news that the league has asked the federal government for a $150 million loan — in stages. The CFL deserves to be treated no better or worse than any other non-essential business tapping into government money. Same as the Canadian Premier League. It’s not as if that money is being taken away from public health, any more than the money your business is likely receiving or about to receive.
• These are salad days for Canadian soccer and it’s my hope this pandemic doesn’t interfere with the obvious momentum enjoyed by the sport. It’s not just Alphonso Davies staking a claim to a regular role on one of the world’s most heralded sides: it’s seeing reports linking 20-year-old Jonathan David, whose parents emigrated to Ottawa from Haiti 14 years ago, attract the attention of some of the world’s leading clubs.
David has 30 goals in 60 matches for Belgian First Division A side Gent, and while his agent has rubbished rumors linking him to a couple of La Liga clubs it does appear as if he will end up in the Bundesliga along with Davies — albeit not at Bayern Munich. This is great news for the Canadian men’s team, because the Bundesliga has been a point of departure for many significant careers. Hell, the U.S. mens program was never better positioned than it was back in the day when Germany was a virtual finishing school for one or two generations of American players.
[snippet id=3305549]
• The Cowboys don’t always make the smartest decisions in the NFL. But Andy Dalton at $7 million? That seems like good business to me.
• Dates haven’t been released but matchups are known for the 2020 NFL schedule and for the 22nd time in 50 years the top two draft picks (Joe Burrows of the Bengals and Chase Young of the Redskins) are scheduled to face each other in their draft year. It also happened in 2019 when Kyler Murray’s Cardinals took on Nick Bosa’s 49ers.
According to the NFL, the No. 2 pick’s team has won six of the last seven of these meetings, and when it comes to QBs against defensive players it’s 5-0 in favour of the No. 2 pick, going back to 1970 when the Packers and Mike McCoy beat Terry Bradshaw’s Steelers 20-12.
The Redskins’ last win against the Bengals was in 1991. Neither Burrow or Young were born yet.
[relatedlinks]
THE ENDGAME
Frankly, I’d rather binge-watch Bosch or read a good book than waste an inordinate amount of time watching, let alone talking about, The Last Dance because — how to put this politely — Michael Jordan never was that interesting. I guess it’s like jazz — I don’t get it, have never had an ear for it, but I fully understand those folks who do.
I’ve caught bits of The Last Dance. It’s OK, although I don’t think it would be a cultural touchstone if something else was going on, and I’m reasonably certain no athlete’s life or career is worth that many hours of my time, pandemic or no pandemic.
Still, it was slightly amusing to read in the Wall Street Journal that Ken Burns, the much-heralded documentary filmmaker, decried the involvement of Jordan’s production company and his degree of editorial control for detracting from the “journalism” that should have/could have been done.
First… I’m not sure a documentary needs to be high journalism and we all know that ESPN is like every other big sports network in that it treats its big properties with a little more sensitivity. There’s only so much digging and icky parts of the sausage that ESPN is comfortable showing and the smart viewer realizes that when he or she sits at the table.
You’d think Burns would realize that you can’t keep everyone happy. Like Hispanics, who routinely received short shrift in his series on baseball — six minutes devoted to Latino players out of 18 freaking hours, all of four minutes to Roberto Clemente — as well as his series on jazz and World War II. In that latter series, pressure on PBS forced him to include an “extra” half hour on Hispanic and Native American soldiers, to correct the oversight. Burns later did a separate series on baseball in the Dominican Republic: 16 years later, in fact.
Concessions get made all the time, right? Concessions to money, narrative, time. Predispositions, too.
Jeff Blair hosts Writers Bloc with Stephen Brunt and Richard Deitsch from 2-5 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 590/The Fan. You can also hear the show live on the Sportsnet app, at Sprtsnt.ca/590listen or tell Google or Alexa to “play Sportsnet 590.” You can rate, review and subscribe to show’s podcast here and follow Jeff on Instagram here.