IN A RATHER good imitation of a company arguing for unpaid internships, Major League Baseball (MLB) suggested earlier this month that minor-league players should go without pay during spring training. “It is the players that obtain the greater benefit from the training opportunities that they are afforded than the clubs, who actually just incur the cost of having that training,” said a lawyer for the league. Most minor leaguers, who play for small local teams while trying to catch the eye of major-league scouts, earned less than $14,000 in 2021. The poorest team owner has a net worth of $500m.
Such haughtiness is not just reserved for minor leaguers. MLB’s 30 team owners and the union that represents major-league players have been at loggerheads since December, when the owners instituted a lockout. Players are blocked from their team’s facilities, and all trades and contract negotiations are on hold until both sides sign a new collective-bargaining agreement. Negotiations have stalled while players and owners spar over minimum salaries and whether to allow more teams into the play-offs, among other things.
Baseball’s labour stand-off comes at an interesting time. President Joe Biden has pledged to be a champion for unions. Workers at Starbucks and Amazon are trying to organise. Cornell University documented 265 work stoppages in 2021 involving some 140,000 people. A paltry 10% of American workers belong to a union, but public support for organised labour is climbing.
Yet baseball’s situation is unique, for three reasons. First, the league has a long tradition of nasty labour disputes; this is the ninth stoppage since 1972. Therefore, the lockout seems less a product of the times and more a reflection of enduring animosity between owners and players. Second, MLB is a monopoly. Unlike workers in warehouses or shops, baseball players have nowhere else to take their talents if they can’t come to an agreement with the league. Last, many of the players are multimillionaires. It’s not clear whether sports stars can count on the same sympathy from Americans as workers toiling for $15 an hour or less. Is there a little guy to root for in a fight between millionaires and billionaires?
The longer the lockout drags on, the more MLB will test Americans’ love of the sport. Baseball’s popularity has tanked among young people. Gen Z prefers e-sports to the national pastime. Average attendances dropped in the years that followed a long strike in 1994, as bitter fans proved slow to return to ballparks. Many credited the explosion of home runs in the late 1990s—which was fuelled by steroid use—for bringing fans back into the fold.
Opening Day is set for March 31st. If players and owners can’t strike a deal by the end of February, the start of the season could be delayed. Spring training, when teams head to Florida and Arizona to remove the close-season rust, will already begin late. In February and March every team looks terrible, and even fans of the Chicago Cubs, who traded all of their good players last year, can fantasise about winning the World Series come autumn (though your correspondent is not deluded enough to think it likely).
In 1962, Roger Angell, one of America’s finest baseball writers, described spring training as “a sun-warmed sleepy exhibition celebrating the juvenescence of the year and the senescence of the fans”. Times have changed since Angell’s wry dispatches from Sarasota. Clubs have built fancy ballparks and ratcheted up ticket prices for the die-hard fans who make the annual trek to Florida from frigid New York or Boston. Once the domain of greying Floridians with a few bucks to spare, spring training has become a moneyspinner. But only if there is baseball to watch.
Even if the players and owners can come to terms on salary arbitration rules, one of the main sticking-points, some damage has been done. Relations between the sides have been acrimonious for decades. But things soured further during 2020 when they sparred over covid-19 protocols, and compensation for a shortened season. Collective-bargaining agreements typically last for five years. Whenever a deal is reached, don’t be surprised if there’s yet another stand-off in 2027.