Just when you thought it was over.
Just when you thought baseball couldn’t possibly drag this public spat out any longer.
Just when you thought there were some grown ups in the room who could reign in the owners, who are acting like toddlers refusing to share any of their toys in the sandbox.
That’s when it got worse.
As of Thursday afternoon, there was a public petition with more than 5,000 signatures requesting MLB commissioner Rob Manfred be removed from his role after the latest failed attempt to get baseball going again.
One of the few sports where social distancing is mostly possible, baseball still has no future.
Let’s quickly recap perhaps the ugliest eight days of Manfred’s tenure.
On June 10, after months of public squabble over whether or not the owners actually guaranteed the players prorated pay in 2020 or not, Manfred went on MLB Network to declare there would “100%” be baseball this year.
Five days later, on June 15, Manfred looked depressed on ESPN as he told the sports world that he was no longer confident there would be a season. It was grim. And a total reversal of his tone five days earlier.
Two days after that, on June 17, Manfred flew to Arizona to meet with MLB Players Association head Tony Clark and had a meeting that was reported to put the two sides back on track to coming to an agreement.
Hope, once again!
Then the very next day, Thursday, June 18, Manfred basically admitted we’re all in trouble.
“This needs to be over,” he told USA Today.
This poor guy’s head must be spinning. Trying to get 30 of the wealthiest people in America to come to an agreement on how baseball would return has apparently been an infeasible task, despite the fact that every other major sports commissioner has gotten it done.
And yet in baseball, there are still as many as six to eight owners who would rather there not have a season this year, according to The Athletic and SNY.
Why? Just take it from representatives from ownership with the Cubs, Cardinals and Diamondbacks, who have had a jolly old time going public with their view that they aren’t as rich as one might think, or that their businesses aren’t making as many millions in profit as Forbes might suggest.
Never mind that most of their stakes in ownership have gone up 3 to 10 times since they first invested in the team.
Manfred now says he thought his negotiations with Clark on Wednesday were settled on a 60-game offer to pay the players full prorated salaries (which is just another way of saying that, overall, they’re taking a 63% pay cut, a bigger pay cut than any other athletes in any other professional sport in the world).
And not only that, but the owners are getting a handful of concessions from the players to help them make more money in 2020. Among them are broadcast enhancements (more in-game interviews and mic’d up players, perhaps), an expanded playoff that keeps growing and is now at 16 teams (why not make it 30?) and the latest trade chip that the players gave to the owners: sponsorships on their uniforms.
That means the historic Red Sox uniform you may purchase for a family member for their next birthday could come with an embroidered logo for Ford Motor Company, or W.B. Mason, or Sam Adams, or whichever of the Sox’ partners pays the most money for their spot on a uniform that’s never before endorsed a logo. Previously reported estimates project teams to make somewhere around $10 million per season, if not more.
But when the players countered on Thursday with a 70-game season that still gave the owners many of their bargained bonuses, the owners were suddenly stunned.
Multiple reports across the industry said the owners were “livid,” that they felt the counter offer sent them “backwards,” and they now wondered if there would be any baseball at all.
Why? Because the owners don’t seem interested in giving anything to the players. With the collective bargaining agreement up after the 2021 season, it seems like all the owners want to do is take, take, take.
They want guarantees that the players don’t have to make, that they surely won’t make if an agreement isn’t reached and Manfred unilaterally implement a 50-game season with previously-negotiated terms.
And as soon as the players showed unity, using their social media platforms to say “tell us when and where,” and were waiting for Manfred schedule a season that would likely be followed by a formal grievance filed by the players, the owners finally were willing to negotiate.
All they did was go from 50 to 60 games.
The players started by asking for 114 games. They’re down to 70.
And the owners are still upset.
It’s starting to look like they don’t want baseball at all, unless it’s on their terms and then some. They don’t want to give up anything. They want to watch players put their lives at risk from a comfortable spot in their homes or owners’ boxes while logos brand the uniforms and a new billion-dollar postseason agreement keeps the cash flowing into their bank accounts.
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June 19, 2020 at 06:18AM
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Rob Manfred, MLB owners looking worse by the day - Boston Herald
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