Tony Clark’s second MLB act as union head
When Tony Clark turned 30 years old, he was coming off an All-Star season and earning $5 million, the highest salary of his 15-year major league career. Two years later, in 2004, he was a part-time player for the New York Yankees whose salary had been cut by 85%.
Clark considered his ordeal as he stood in the on-deck circle at Yankee Stadium in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox. If he could only get to the plate, Clark was sure he would make up for all of his frustrations by doing what he did best: obliterating a baseball. Ruben Sierra walked, giving Clark a chance to win the pennant with a home run.
“When I swung through strike three, I didn’t understand how I missed it,” Clark, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, said recently in his corner office in midtown Manhattan. “To this day, I don’t understand how I missed it.”
Clark, now 47, never made it to the World Series. But he ascended to become the head of a union once viewed as the strongest in sports in December 2013, and led its last collective bargaining agreement with the owners.
That deal has turned into a rout of a different kind — though this was more of a curveball than a belt-high fastball. With little warning, data-savvy executives across the game have turned free agency from a reliable spigot of cash into an annual freeze. Discontented players have spoken up about issues with the entire system, from a lack of competition among teams to the quality of the product on the field.
There has not been a strike in baseball in 25 years. But two offseasons of building tension has led the union and owners to the unprecedented step of a midterm renegotiation of their CBA this summer — more than two years before it expires. And Clark is not seeking minor adjustments: He maintains that the system is broken.
In extending Clark’s contract in November, the players have given him another at-bat. Now is his chance to correct whatever mistakes he and the union made in negotiating the current contract in 2016.
“He’s angry, like we all are,” Whit Merrifield of the Kansas City Royals said. “He’s angry at the way things have been handled — and that’s what you want.”
The CBA signed in 2016 drew few criticisms initially, but soon an uneasy consensus emerged: It had allowed the owners to tilt the balance in their favor. The fundamental aspects of the system were in place before Clark took over. But some changes, such as harder caps on international spending and stricter penalties for higher payrolls, were clear wins for owners.
“We were under the assumption that we weren’t giving up that much,” New York Mets outfielder Michael Conforto said. “We didn’t realize that there were ways around the things that we put in to protect ourselves.”
Some players have said the union might not have properly anticipated what was to come. While Clark rejects the notion that the union was more concerned about quality-of-life issues, such as travel and clubhouse food, than the larger issues in the system, he admitted he was not prepared for the rapid changes in the labor landscape.
“I didn’t see this. Didn’t see these changes,” Clark said, noting the agreement “didn’t move very much.” He added, “Even others have acknowledged that the changes have been vast and quick from the standpoint of all 30 clubs.”
As his second chance approaches, Clark has taken measures to galvanize players and strengthen relationships with agents. The union has built a formal analytics department, introduced a smartphone app for players and overhauled its communications staff. Bruce Meyer, an experienced lawyer who worked closely with the former union chief, Donald Fehr, at the NHL, was hired to be the chief negotiator. Clark estimated that the union had undergone more staff changes in the past few years than at any point in its previous five decades.
Clark has spent much of the past year meeting with and talking to agents and players around the country. He conducted several of his usual spring training meetings outside of the clubhouses to minimize the risk of spying by management.
“I didn’t do a good enough job preparing players in ’16 for any eventuality,” Clark said, referring to a range of options that include, yes, going on strike.
While some players and agents have privately criticized the union and Clark, many instead blamed themselves, pointing to widespread complacency before the last CBA negotiations.
“We’re in a world of 280-character answers,” Merrifield added. “We want to learn about things surface level. That’s how I feel like guys were two years ago. They wanted a short and brief ‘How we doing? How we going to do this?’ That’s what they got. They weren’t educated on what exactly was happening.”
The system that was upheld still works for many players, of course: Manny Machado and Bryce Harper landed a combined $630 million in free agency this offseason. But with a few exceptions, the landscape is now painfully obvious: The system stifles the earning power of the younger players teams covet, without the promise of later rewards.
“This is a fundamental fairness issue where how it’s always worked is no longer working,” Clark said, adding later, “The players understand and appreciate that the goal posts have been moved and the dynamic now is different.”
Finding a suitable balance, of course, is essential to any negotiation. When one side feels a sharp imbalance, as the players do now, fundamental change becomes extremely challenging.
Commissioner Rob Manfred has seemed open to the idea of reform, motivated by his desire to change paceof-play rules. Yet Manfred has found the union slow to respond to his overtures.
“We invited during spring training of 2018 — and I did not misspeak just there — Tony to get in a room with us, tell us what his concerns were about whatever issue he had, and try to deal with those concerns,” Manfred said at the owners’ meetings in June. “I’m encouraged that he’s ready to do that. We made a deal in 2016 and we’re prepared to live with that deal. By the same token, we’re prepared to listen to his concerns.”
Executives are right to place a higher value on younger players than they do on veterans. Manfred, Clark and their top negotiating lieutenants — Dan Halem, the MLB deputy commissioner for baseball administration and chief legal officer, and Meyer — could conceivably find ways to redirect more money to younger players.
Owners do not want players dictating how they should run their teams, but the union believes that the league has embraced groupthink — it is careful not to use the word “collusion” — in a way that depresses players’ earning power.
“You can’t fault an owner or a GM for wanting to maximize profit and at the same time be competitive,” said pitcher Charlie Morton of the Tampa Bay Rays, who are contending despite the majors’ lowest payroll. “I guess what we’re going to have to push for is maximizing salaries for younger guys that are performing and giving value to teams — and competition.”
For many months to come, the competition in the bargaining room could be just as intense as the play on the field. Clark wants the union to be prepared for potentially difficult negotiations ahead with deep-pocketed owners and MLB’s fleet of lawyers. The players are getting the message.
“It’s going to be a pretty cordial beginning to it, but as the offseason goes on, it’s going to get pretty hot,” Conforto said. “Tony has tried to prepare us. He says, ‘Save your money, make sure that you’re not spreading yourself too thin so you can weather the storm.’
“We all have to help each other out with that. If worse comes to worst and we have to stop — if we get locked out or we strike — just be prepared for it. Everyone needs to have that in the back of their minds: Be prepared and make sure we’re all together.”