An official MLB baseball sits on top of an MLB game-used base with a lock and chain around it to represent the lockout between Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) on January 28, 2022 in Lincroft, New Jersey.
Rich Graessle | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images
Major League Baseball and the players union are approaching the ninth inning of their labor standoff. And extra innings in this case would mean less baseball, not more.
Owners set a Monday deadline for a deal, otherwise they would move to delay Opening Day, which is currently set for March 31. Talks, which are being held at the St. Louis Cardinals’ spring training complex in Jupiter, Fla., are expected to continue through the weekend.
The two parties remain at odds over ways to restart the $10 billion business. MLB owners, who initiated the lockout Dec. 2, want only minimum changes to the current collective bargaining agreement. The players have other ideas on ways to earn more money.
Regular-season games could be canceled, players wouldn’t be paid for the full 162-game season, and it could all add up to a disastrous development for MLB’s business.
Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark, left foreground, and chief negotiator Bruce Meyer, second from left, arrive at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., Monday, Feb. 21, 2022.
Ron Blum | AP
‘Lack of relationships’
“Very publicly, at least on the PA side, the lines were drawn early,” said former MLB executive Marty Conway, referring to the MLB Players Association.
Now a sports business professor at Georgetown University, Conway served as an executive under former MLB Commissioner Pete Ueberroth. Conway blamed the tension in these labor talks on a “lack of relationships” among the MLB and the players union.
“They (players) felt the last two labor agreements – so you’re talking about 10 years – there wasn’t an equality or an equity part of it,” said Conway. “That told me that the new folks coming in (executive director Tony Clark and the new chief negotiator Bruce Meyer) are there for a reason – to make changes.”
The jabs started early between MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and Clark. The two couldn’t see eye-to-eye on ways to start MLB’s 2020 season as the world grappled with Covid. That resulted in a 60-game campaign. MLB saved a big piece of its national TV money after completing the postseason and World Series. But players missed out on full salaries during the 2020 season.
In 2018, MLBPA filed a grievance and accused MLB teams including Miami, Oakland, and Pittsburgh of not spending the shared revenue on players, which is against the rules. Add in the frustration of declining salaries, and how executives now run clubs;
Last November, Meyer, the players’ chief negotiator, sent a strong message.
“Players feel like the system has gotten out of whack and really gone too far in favoring the owners,” Meyer told The Atlantic. “The system isn’t operating really the way it was…
Read More: Owners could delay Opening Day if no labor deal by Monday