“If you don’t like what is being said, then change the conversation.” – Don Draper
The baseball season has been in the hands of Mad Men. The negotiators on both sides are crazed in allegiance to their position and fury at each other. Plus, they are relentless salespeople diligently advertising views of their accuracy and the other side’s mendacity.
I have failed so far during the pandemic to meet my goals to learn Spanish and read a book a week. My accomplishment stands at finally binge-watching Mad Men; I know, sad. But there in Season 3, Episode 2 is Don Draper — played by avowed baseball fan Jon Hamm — espousing what MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s strategy needs to be now.
Manfred has the power to impose a season as long as he pays players their prorated salaries, and he said before Wednesday’s first round of the draft that is what he would do. But first will come another proposal that he described as pushing strongly toward the union’s positions. Great. He then should set a tight deadline, Friday evening at the latest, for real movement or else Manfred should implement as many games as his bosses, the owners, can tolerate.
Recriminations and bad-mouthing will follow. But by the end of the weekend, my suspicion is the conversation will mainly shift to players showing up at spring training, which teams are best positioned to prosper in a sprint season — hey, how about getting more money by having Sprint sponsor the season? — and digesting whatever new rules are being implemented and who they benefit.
Manfred needs to change the subject from fighting to baseball.
This commissioner’s history, even when he could impose, say, a pitch clock, has been to try to reach agreement with the players association. The same has been true about attempting to restart the game. Except the sides have a March 26 agreement and are still fighting about what it says about how players should be paid.
These are not cave drawings that need interpreting, but rather English words on paper. Yet both view the document differently and what it allows them to demand. Owners feel players should not receive prorated pay for a season longer than roughly two months, which Manred reasserted Wednesday. The union has dismissed management claims of financial distress and argued players should not have to cover owner losses when salaries did not rise concurrently in recent years when revenues soared.
This fight is a few months old and the relationship is the worst it has been since labor strife led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. There were back-and-forth proposals Monday and Tuesday that still left a sizable gap. The players called for prorated pay over an 89-game season after the owners offered 50 percent guaranteed for 76 games with another 25 percent available if the playoffs are completed.
The sides could keep inching along, further soiling everyone involved and the game’s image. But the positions have been delineated. So Manfred should send the new proposal with the understanding that either this forges a deal and quick or the owners will install a season to their tolerance at 48 or 52 or 54 games. If it is the latter, the players will file a grievance seeking money damages claiming MLB failed to meet the mandate to play the most games possible. But players (at least most of them) would then report to camp.
This is among the reasons Manfred wants a settlement, to avoid further discord. Is there a compromise somewhere in the 60s or 70s for games where the owners stretch closer to 100 percent and the players agree that the difference not paid initiates a joint fund over the next 10 years in which the sides donate to agreed-upon social causes? Something approaching a win-win in this environment.
Already the ideal July 4 weekend has been missed, and both sides will forever be party to not playing the most games possible; for being unable to summon statesmanship when the sport never needed it more.
But both sides’ last proposal had a July 10 regular-season start date, which still beats the NHL and NBA to real games and the NFL to training camp.
A season of 48-54 games stinks. But not playing at all is worse — to be absent for 18 months. Games provide a forum for elite players and indelible moments and to stop using the word “prorated.”
By this time next week, imperfect as it is, we could be arguing if a four-man or six-man rotation is best in a sprint, do huge stars mean more or less in a shorter season and could an out-of-nowhere team win it all in this dynamic. The topic, flawed, would still be baseball.
And it is time to change the conversation to that.