Month: June 2023

On AQI, solidarity, and scabs

Something has to be done that treats dangerous AQI with the gravity it deserves.

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When will Major League Baseball games set to be played in dangerous air quality conditions be regularly canceled instead of becoming a debate every time out? Maybe it’s best not to ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to. What we do know, however, is that Thursday’s contest between the Pirates and Padres in Pittsburgh was delayed due to the poor Air Quality Index, and then eventually played.

We’re going to have two stories converge into one here, so just bear with me. Jason Mackey, the Pirates’ beat writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, published a story on the delay and the game on Thursday. That story won’t be linked to here, because the Post-Gazette is on strike, and has been for months — so yes, McKay continuing to write for the Post-Gazette (along with other portions of the sports desk there) is scab behavior and should be treated as such. What I can link to, though, is McKay’s tweet on a quote that didn’t make it into his story.

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Notes: MLB commissioner, Royals’ stadium, media and sports gambling

You don’t want a better liar even if you think you do, what’s going on with the Royals’ stadium search, and when a reporter also partners with a gambling site.

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“Surely things will be different with a new commissioner,” you think. No, no they will not. Maybe you’d be a little less angry at a new commissioner’s general public attitude, but their job is to be the representative of MLB’s 30 owners, which is to say, the job is to lie. To you, to local, state, and federal governments, to the players, to anyone who needs to hear the lies that would benefit the owners if they’re heard.

I got into this at Baseball Prospectus last week, in the wake of Rob Manfred basically making fun of A’s fans for getting together for one last home game to tell John Fisher where he could shove the Las Vegas stadium legislation. People dislike Manfred very much, and think things would be better with a new commissioner, but that’s just not how it goes by design:

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Senate legislation challenges MLB’s antitrust exemption. But!

The worst Senators you know made a great point, only they made it in order to demonize the marginalized people they hate.

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You know the whole “The worst person you know just made a great point” meme? The one with the bald dude staring into the camera with a look of annoyed realization and acceptance? This is an article about that sort of thing, except for the parts where I will remind you that these are, in fact, some of the worst people you know, and the point they’re trying to make is mostly cosplay they’ve dressed up in, in order to shout the kind of opinions that make them some of the worst people you know, but professional-like.

Got all that? Well, this should help explain. Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Josh Hawley introduced legislation to the U.S. Senate challenging MLB’s antitrust exemption. To introduce this legislation, they released a joint statement saying:

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Notes: A different MLB salary cap, Barbara Lee’s ‘Moneyball Act’

The A’s might have opened up quite a few cans of antitrust-flavored worms, and MLB has new ideas for curbing spending.

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There won’t be a salary cap instituted for spending on players, no matter how many times someone leaks to the press that the owners want a salary cap. They always want a salary cap. The luxury tax system exists because of that desire for a salary cap, and it already effectively works like one to a degree — that’s as far as the Players Association is willing to go on this particular matter, and it’s not like they actually meant for things to get the way they did, either.

A salary cap on non-player spending, though? Oh you know MLB can get away with that. Or at least, institute it without a fight, since front offices, scouts, and so on aren’t unionized, and therefore can’t actually fight that sort of thing. Which is exactly why this appears to be the next area of spending that MLB is looking to cut. Per Evan Drellich:

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The A’s relocation and MLB’s antitrust exemption don’t fit together

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Remember the summer of 2022, when MLB had to turn its attention away from the lockout and the then-finalized collective bargaining, and toward Congress, which was questioning the league about its antitrust exemption? Remember, too, that one of commissioner Rob Manfred’s defenses of the antitrust exemption — which was under scrutiny in no small part due to the mistreatment and exploitation of minor-league players — was that its central purpose was to keep teams from relocating, taking baseball away from the communities that had it in the process?

The receipts are out there, so let’s start going through them. Here’s Manfred speaking with Bill Shaikin at The Los Angeles Times, from July 15:

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The A’s Las Vegas stadium bill is dead, unless it isn’t

The A’s stadium bill didn’t make it through the normal legislative session, so now it’s on to a special session, which doesn’t guarantee anything, either.

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The legislative session that included the Memorial Day weekend Las Vegas stadium bill for the A’s has come and gone, and without the bill being passed. A’s supporters in Vegas were always up against the clock here, so the session ending, bringing on the need for a special session this summer, was a likely possibility from the start. The thing is, a special session can’t just be called by anyone, which is how we ended up in situations like the one the A’s and their supporters are in now.

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Dodgers’ stadium workers protest, threaten strike

Dodgers’ stadium workers — not the concessioners from last year — are threatening a strike while working under an expired contract.

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Back in April, stadium workers at the Pirates’ PNC Park threatened to go on strike if their demands weren’t met. The Pirates had stopped negotiating with these employees, so this was the last recourse available to the ushers, ticket takers, and ticket sellers: the team averted the strike by reaching a tentative deal before it was set to occur, and while I didn’t love said deal, the threat at least got the team to respond.

Now, Dodgers’ stadium workers will try their luck with a similar tactic, which also follows Dodger Stadium concession workers successfully negotiating a new deal in 2022. Those workers, part of UNITE HERE, threatened to strike the All-Star Game, which would have been a serious issue for the Dodgers as hosts, given the magnitude of the midsummer classic on the schedule. The strike threat convinced someone on the management side to get back to the table, whether it was Compass/Levy, the concessioners that employ the union members, or someone from the Dodgers screaming in someone from Compass/Levy’s ear about it since it was going to impact them — either way, it worked.

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