Baseball oblivious to real world problems
On a simplistic level, the beef between Major League Baseball and its players association should be easy enough to resolve.
The players want a full pro-rated salary based on the number of games that can be squeezed into, ahem, this season. Not surprisingly, they want to play as many games as possible.
MLB, on the other hand, is trying to negotiate a percentage of those pro-rated salaries while playing a fewer number of regular-season games and more, ahem, playoff games. This, despite an agreement that was reached in late March, in which the players would receive their full pro-rated share.
Apparently things have changed since late March. Has anyone else noticed?
Still, given everything at stake, you’d think the players and owners could hammer out a number that’s palatable to both sides. I mean, they wouldn’t be engaged in a game of chicken while the rest of North America is fighting the COVID-19 outbreak would they? They wouldn’t be bickering over dollars while the economy is in tatters, while their fans are confronting a generational crisis.
It just doesn’t seem possible.
But here they are, on a course that will result in incalculable damage to the game, and we’re left to wonder, just what are they thinking?
According to a variety of reports, MLB was supposed to table its next, and presumably final, offer to the players’ union on Friday, but if the league is overly concerned about the state of negotiations, it doesn’t exactly show. There was no offer from the owners.
On Wednesday, commissioner Rob Manfred said there was a “100 per cent certainty” that games would be played this season, and the March agreement with the players gave him the power to set a shortened schedule.
Great. But the implementation solution isn’t a solution at all. On top of everything else, the current collective bargaining agreement is set to expire in December of 2021 and, with tensions already running high, any strong-arm play by the owners would break the fragile relationship between the two sides.
If you lived through the first era of labour wars in baseball, which resulted in eight work stoppages from 1972 to 1994, there’s almost something nostalgic about all this. But if baseball thinks fans will forgive and forget another interruption because, well, they always do, they’re hopelessly misguided.
The question isn’t whether baseball will survive a labour war. It’s will it survive as a $10-billion industry? COVID-19 has already left its mark on this season, but the real fear should be in what lies beyond 2020.
Come to think of it, the same fear applies to the NHL, the CFL and, to a lesser extent, the NFL and NBA because every major sports league faces the same threat to its business. Right now they’re all scrambling to salvage a mutated form of their season and that’s presented enough challenges.
But what happens next? What happens if the fans aren’t allowed to return in the fall? What happens if they have to practise physical distancing when they do return? What happens if the economy continues to tank and people have to start prioritizing their spending? What happens if there’s a second wave of the novel coronavirus?
We could go on and it’s not being alarmist. It’s simply asking relevant and logical questions. Things are unsettled now, but if anyone knows when things will return as they once were, they’re keeping it to themselves.
That’s why the baseball impasse is so difficult to understand. MLB has a chance to score some goodwill points here, to set aside its differences with the PA and get back on the field when we could all use a diversion.
Instead, they’re arguing over percentage points and the number of games played while their fans look on in disbelief.
As for who occupies the moral high ground, who cares? The owners have reverted to their historical position of claiming massive losses and a failing industry that the players will kill with their demands. But a public exhausted by its own problems doesn’t want to hear about the problems of millionaire baseball players. They just want to see games.
As mentioned, MLB isn’t alone here. This week Chicago’s Patrick Kane was asked about the NHL’S plan to open training camps on July 10. Turns out he wasn’t overjoyed with that announcement.
“The NHL is putting out these dates and whatnot, and as players we’re taking a step back and saying why are these dates being put out when we haven’t really agreed to anything yet?” Kane said, before adding: “We want to keep our eye on the ball and make sure we get a fair deal.”
The NBA is also starting to experience pushback from its players over the league’s restart plans in Orlando.
The CFL, meanwhile, occupies a different tax bracket, but this week a beef between the players and the league made headlines when the story should have been the reopening of teams’ facilities.
Those are today’s problems for the leagues in question and they’re weighty. But here’s the thing: they’re nothing compared to what’s coming in a world that is trying to recover from a crippling pandemic.
That world will eventually get back to something approaching normal. We just don’t know if sports will resume its place in that world.