| [JOHN BAZEMORE | Associated Press] |
| A disaster that was both foolish and avoidable |
| Okay, so it looks like I screwed up. A week ago, I suggested baseball’s labor war would be solved by now because there was no way the owners were either A) stupid or B) greedy enough to jeopardize opening day. A) Apparently, they are. B) Of course, they are. (After typing this, I realized it sounded like Otter in Animal House. “You f--ked up. You trusted us.” It’s amazing how much of my world view is shaped by classic ’70s movies.) I gave owners far too much credit, and that’s my foolish mistake. If baseball history has taught us anything, it’s that most owners would body-block Mother Teresa to pick up a dollar off the sidewalk. And so, even though baseball’s revenues have been trending upward and salaries have been trending downward, owners fought the players on every inch of every issue in these negotiating sessions. The result is you are cordially invited to watch the USFL this spring. Why? Because baseball ain’t going to be around. If I was optimistic about this deal getting done last week, I am feeling downright hopeless right now. There is no way you trash opening day unless you are in this fight for the long haul, and it appears that’s where we are heading. When I wrote about this last week, I suggested a deal would get done because there just wasn’t that much money at stake in the grand scheme of things. For the most part, that’s still true. The difference between what the owners are offering and the players are seeking in minimum salary and a pre-arbitration bonus pool adds up to less than $75 million a year. So that’s about $2.5 million per team. The average payroll in 2021 was $132 million, so that’s less than a 2-percent increase. The luxury tax threshold is the real issue. The threshold acts as a faux salary cap, and MLB doesn’t want to see it increase. Owners offered to raise the threshold by less than 2 percent, on average, each of the next five years. The players wanted an average increase of closer to 5 percent annually. Considering how baseball’s revenues have soared the last decade, the players should probably be asking for even more. The fact that owners rejected even a modest 5-percent increase is unconscionable. So why are the owners digging in on this? Basically, because they can. Other than opening day, April is typically their slowest month for attendance (kids are still in school, weather is cold in a lot of cities, etc.) so this is the optimum time for a lockout. There’s also a certain percentage of games they can lose before their local TV providers start asking for refunds. Essentially, the owners are hoping a few weeks without paychecks will coerce the players into caving before this thing becomes really serious. Owners don’t get the bulk of their national TV money until the postseason, so they can afford a certain amount of patience. They also are convinced that fans will eventually forget the economic arguments of the spring and show up in large numbers again in the summer and fall. And maybe there’s some truth to that. But it’s a losing strategy. MLB has been losing fans pretty steadily the past 20 years, and the only reason profits have increased is because of TV, sponsorships, streaming and other big-ticket revenue streams. But that money will begin to dry up when TV execs start realizing the average kid is no longer watching, and corporations will stop buying season tickets when employees are no longer enthusiastic about going to a Tuesday night game against a last-place team. Baseball owners might be putting the screws to the players to save some short-term money, but they’re ignoring the customers, which is a long-term failure. |
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