MLB OWNERS READY TO PLAY SOME HARDBALL
Bid to split revenue from shortened season with players could herald salary cap era
It’s one of the strange truths of professional sports that the rich people involved tend to garner less public sympathy than the extremely rich people.
That is, when an athlete declines to play for an offered sum, this is often viewed as greed. That ownership is trying to save a few dollars in the name of profit gets much less consideration. The same people who would generally support labour in a fight with management take the opposite view of athletes, often, I think, because their careers are considered a fun game rather than a difficult job.
The players of Major League Baseball are about to be given a lesson in this odd reality.
Baseball has emerged as the leader in the return-to-play race in recent days, for the simple reason that its teams have thrown their support behind a single plan to get things moving. The proposal would see a half-season of games played in empty stadiums beginning in early July, with regional matchups meant to limit travel and an expanded playoffs meant to recoup lost revenue. Putting aside all the relevant questions about how this might be done safely, it’s enough of a season that it’s worth doing, not unlike what can happen after a labour dispute.
But the likely sticking point is a big one: Major League Baseball has let it be known through media leaks that it would like the players to be paid a share of the revenues earned in the truncated season and playoffs, instead of just being paid a pro-rated amount of their salaries for the 2020 season, based on how many games could be squeezed in. That was the deal to which the players agreed in March: If Player X was supposed to get US$10 million for 162 games, pay them US$5 million for 81 games and call it a day.
MLB and its owners, though, are now keen on using the drop in revenues associated with all those empty seats to demand new terms and an equal split of whatever money baseball brings in. It’s an idea that’s bound to win broad support, since the other major North American leagues already have wages that are directly tied to leaguewide revenues.
Meanwhile, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is already out of the gate to lament that players might want to “haggle over their salaries” at a time like this.
“I hope that the players will understand that the people of our United States need them to recognize that this is an important part of leisure time that all of us want to have during the summer, to watch them play baseball,” Pritzker said, according to The Associated Press. (Despite a name like an old-time railroad baron with a three-piece suit and a monocle, the governor is a Democrat.)
He also said he was disappointed that players are holding out for “these very, very high salaries and payments” at a time when many are making sacrifices.
Pritzker, the AP notes, is a member of a family that owns a hotel empire and has a net worth estimated at more than
$3 billion.
If MLB goes through with the request for an even revenue split, it will be framed as a modest concession from the players amid widespread economic calamity. But it could just as easily be framed as using a global pandemic that has killed tens of thousands as an excuse to finally shoehorn a hard salary cap into the economics of Major League Baseball.
Baseball players are alone among pro athletes on this continent in refusing all attempts to have their salaries artificially suppressed by a salary cap. There is a luxury tax that has some of that effect, but the thresholds are so high that only massive spenders are impacted. The free market operates largely as intended, although rich teams sometimes shed salary to dive under the luxury tax and pretend it was an obligation rather than a choice.
Even as baseball has seen its popularity decline, and even though far too many franchises opt out of trying to win for years at a time, there are enough big-spending teams to keep driving top-end salaries higher.
All of that would be immediately blunted by the introduction of a salary cap in baseball. Once baseball salaries are limited strictly to the pool of money the sport earns in a season, teams will want to keep it that way. If it happens in 2020, is there any doubt the 2021 season, which will likely include some kind of virus-related revenue losses, would also be targeted for an equal split?
The players have to know that, if they concede the ground in their decades-long fight against a salary cap here, they’re not going to win it back.
That MLB’s owners would use the pandemic and the prospects of a lost season to exploit the leverage they finally have over their employees is galling, but I suspect I’m in the minority on that one. Many fans who want baseball back will say the players should take a 50-50 proposal and be grateful to have jobs.