Is it about money or health?
Claiming both is not an option
The billionaire owners never have to worry about the millionaire baseball players wresting public sentiment from them during labor negotiations. They just need to sit back and wait for a ballplayer to say something wildly tone-deaf.
Rays left-hander and 2018 Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, take a bow. It’s going to be hard for any of your colleagues to top you. You worked every quadrant of the strike zone in your hell-no-wewon’t-go-back-to-work-with-anystinking-pay-cut stance.
“For me to take a pay cut is not happening because the risk is through the roof,” Snell said during a question-and-answer session on his Twitch channel, whatever that is.
So he’ll take a risk that is “through the roof,” for $3.5 million for half a season, but not for $1.75 million? If he really believes that he’s taking such a big risk, why would he do it for any price? After this season, he has $38.5 million coming for the following three seasons. He can’t reap the benefits of that if he risks his life and loses, which means he dies, and he did say more than once that playing baseball would be risking his life.
Unless he’s wildly reckless with his money, he’s one season from setting himself up for life financially, yet he draws the line at $3.5 million? He’s really undervaluing his life and earning potential there.
Predictably, Snell was praised by other prominent players, Phillies superstar Bryce Harper first among them.
It’s still a free country, sort of, so baseball players don’t owe it to anybody to resume the season. But if they try to weigh both pay and health risk on the same scale, they need to get more realistic about mixing their pitches. Pitch me on being philosophically opposed to taking a pay cut, and I’ll buy that.
Pitch me on being genuinely afraid of contracting COVID-19, OK, I guess. But combine them? Please.
If the players don’t want to go back without a pay cut that extends beyond the prorated salaries that they signed on for in an agreement that starts with giving the owners the freedom to cancel the season if there are no fans in the stands, that’s fine. It’s a financial decision they are free to make. Or, if they think that it’s not safe to go back to work in the midst of a global pandemic that puts the elderly and those with underlying health conditions at risk, that’s fine too. They are in control of their own bodies, provided they wear masks in public of course, so it’s not up to anybody else to say how much risk they should feel comfortable assuming.
But if they think that anyone is going to believe that it’s about health if they say they’ll play for this much but not that much, they’re more out of touch than ever, which is saying quite a lot.
The owners agreed to the prorated salaries based on fans in the stands, which meant revenue from ticket sales, parking, concessions, game-day corporate sponsors, etc. That’s all gone, so why would the owners want to pay full prorated salaries from a greatly diminished revenue pool? They wouldn’t, which means no season unless the two sides can reach a middle ground.
Snell undoubtedly created bitterness from millions who are out of work, stripping from the players whatever sympathy might have existed about them losing millions of dollars.
But that doesn’t mean the owners are rejoicing over a player coming across as insensitive and greedy. Players are both baseball’s employees and the product itself. And if the public turns against them, it results in smaller crowds, fewer eyeballs on televised games, fewer ears tuned to the soothing sound of summer: Joe Castiglione talking baseball. There go the revenues.
If the two sides can’t come to an agreement, they’ll at least agree on a company line as to why. They’ll say it’s because they couldn’t figure out a safe way to do it. That will be a lie. Those not gullible enough to believe it might take a break from baseball that will extend well beyond the sport’s shutdown.
Snell made another point in trying to get the masses, employed or otherwise, to understand his side of things after explaining he would be making 25 percent of what he signed for to play a full season.
“On top of that, it’s getting taxed,” Snell said. “So imagine how much I’m actually making to play, you know what I’m saying? Like, I ain’t making (expletive). And on top of that, so all the money’s gone and now I play risking my life.”
Wait, ballplayers have to pay taxes? I can understand the nurses and doctors on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19 having to pay taxes on their incomes. But ballplayers? The government makes our heroes pay taxes? This (expletive) has to stop! You know what I’m saying?