As is the case with pretty much everything, when it comes to the return of Major League Baseball, the devil is in the details. Unfortunately, at this particular moment resuming organized professional sports involves more details than landing a RV on the moon. The vast majority of these involve the logistics of playing a team sport in venues across North America without an outbreak of the disease or unduly stressing the limited medial resources of each one of their home cities. Baseball has created a book length document outlining this process, all of which could easily derail from something completely out of their control. And to be clear, pretty much any team city or state could basically pull the plug if there’s an emergency, which seems entirely possible with a second spike as we plod into the unknown. In some ways, it’s like planning a Caribbean Cruise at the height of hurricane season. A lot of things can happen.
But yet, with all the chaos of the moment, with all the what if scenarios about testing and tracing, the thing that might derails this baseball season isn’t the virus, at least not directly. It’s the money. Of course, it’s always the money. Specifically, it’s how much players will earn for their prorated, television only season, one played without the financial benefit of a live audience. Unlike other professional sports, like say the NFL, baseball relies heavily on millions of fans paying for seats over a long stretch. Once you combine the prospect of no gate revenue to a reduced inventory of games, and baseball stands to bring in far, far less than a normal year. So even if they play 50% of their games, the sport may only bring in 25% of the revenue. And I’m being generous.
And that’s where the rubber meets the road. Not surprisingly, labor and ownership don’t see the financial shortfall the same way. The players have agreed to take a prorated salary for this prorated season. Meaning if they play half their games, they want half their pay. The owners, on the other hand, have suggested they take whatever they make this year and divide it 50/50 with the players, which is a fairly standard calculus when building long term collective agreements in sports. From an owner’s perspective, why should they pay athletes money they no longer collect in a landscape that looks nothing like the one in which they previously negotiated.
This impasse – how much the players get paid, or how much the owners lose – this is as likely to end this season literally before it begins as much as the health risks. And it’s one that not only won’t solve easily, but also leaves players without a strong hand. In most owner/labor negotiations in sport, two things tend to happen: the fans tend to side with the owners, and the players tend to lose. For a long list of reasons, American sports fans prefer billionaires to millionaires and rich bosses over rich employees. And the short shelf life of a professional athlete tends to lead the exponentially larger players union to cave before the smaller cabal of owners. That’s how this usually plays out.
I would expect this showdown to be about the same, even as players take on all the added risk of performing during a pandemic. And especially since the public seems to want spectator sports more than ever, baseball players could take the brunt of public opinion should they be perceived as not doing their civic duty in getting back on the field for what a struggling general public still perceives as a whole lot of money. From a bargaining proposition, it’s a no-win situation.
So what should the players do? Far be it from me to tell them how to spend their limited athletic days, but if it were me, I’d collectively decide that in a lose-lose game, sometimes it’s better simply not to play. I mean literally, perhaps it’s better for players to proactively say that right now, neither science nor economics support a return to normal. Which means that for now, in the interest of the country, to ensure resources go where they’re most needed, it’s best to wait until next summer, when we all assume the world will have changed for the better. And even though they may lose a far reduced salary share, they’ll gain a whole lot of leverage in a negotiation they simply can’t win right now. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll be a sign that until our federal government figures out how to take this virus seriously, it’s really hard to play ball.
Will that work? Will it make any difference? As with anything, it’s all in the details.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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