Agreement came quickly following months of failure
Deal to end MLB lockout reached despite no in-person negotiations
Rob Manfred had just made a 6 o’clock decision to cancel a second week of games, and MLB Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem was thinking the lockout could go on quite a while longer.
Then at 6:24 p.m. on March 9, a new proposal from union deputy general counsel Matt Nussbaum plopped into his inbox.
By the time Halem left the office that night, he recalled thinking: “I thought we had a chance to get it done.”
After 11 months of bickering in bargaining, Major League Baseball’s labor contract came together in just a few hours on March 10.
Talks had broken off over an international draft, but Halem’s outlook changed in the short time between Manfred green-lighting the cancellation announcement and MLB’S publication of the news release at 6:30 p.m.
Labor relations in baseball is a mix of banter and bluster, tenacity and tedium, revising and resisting.
In the end, there was not a single face-to-face meeting in the final 24 hours as the sides negotiated on the telephone and through email.
Manfred’s cancellation decision came four hours after the last in-person session. MLB staff sent the union an edit of Nussbaum’s email that night, and after some backand-forth in the morning, players accepted.
Manfred convened a Zoom of the labor policy committee at 10:30 a.m. on March
10, and at noon Senior Vice President Patrick Houlihan emailed to chief negotiator Bruce Meyer, general counsel Ian Penny and Nussbaum what was labeled a best-andfinal offer to preserve a 162game season and full pay, attaching a 3 p.m. deadline.
The union executive board met by Zoom starting at 1 p.m., and Meyer texted Halem a little before 2 p.m. asking for more time.
Veteran baseball writer
Jon Heyman tweeted the balloting in what appeared to be real time, first at 2:50 p.m.: “Union executive board appears to be voting against approval.” Then at 3:07:
“Team votes are coming on now. … So far players are going against the executive council.”
At 3:17 management negotiators heard cheers erupt from elsewhere on the floor of MLB’S Rockefeller Center office. They were a response to his tweet: “Union votes yes on deal.”
The final vote was 26-12 in favor, with the executive subcommittee all opposed and the team player representatives 26-4 for approval.
About 20 minutes later, Meyer called Halem to deliver the news, and at 6 p.m. the 30 owners unanimously approved during a Zoom.
“We had 38 guys on our executive board who were intimately involved in every step of the way — either they took part directly in meetings or they were being briefed multiple times a day,” Meyer said.
“Everything that we did was done based on the input and guidance from the board. We obviously wanted to explore all possibilities of getting a fair deal without missing games. If there wasn’t a fair deal to be had, then guys were prepared to do whatever is necessary. Ultimately, a majority of guys believed that the deal we had on the table was a good deal and worth taking without the risk of missing games.”
Collective bargaining in sports is a process of posturing by management and players who refuse to reveal bottom-line positions until the last possible moment before big money is in danger.
The executive subcommittee thought the union could have pushed for more — seven of the eight earned $12 million or more last year, and five are represented by the game’s leading agent, Scott Boras. The majority of the larger executive committee took the deal in what the union said showed the democratic nature of a union that encouraged widespread attendance on the Zooms.
“We don’t tell teams how to vote or who to vote for for player reps,” Meyer said. “Teams obviously make their decisions. Some clubhouses, they tend to be younger guys. Other clubhouses, they’re veterans.”
A contract was reached on the 99th day of the lockout, 325 days into negotiations that took longer than a season. There was no joint news conference, instead media sessions separated by three city blocks and one day, an indication the 2026-27 negotiations may have the same tone.
Just 161 hours after the start of Manfred’s news conference to announce the lockout’s end, Boston’s Michael Feliz threw the first pitch of spring training, a fastball high taken by Minnesota’s Byron Buxton before a crowd of 8,303 at Jetblue Park in Fort Myers, Florida.
Baseball was back to some semblance of normal.