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The MLB Players Association has spoken up on the league’s threat of a lockout once again, this time in an interview with Foul Territory’s Scott Braun. MLBPA deputy executive director Bruce Meyer joined the show, and was asked about Rob Manfred’s comments earlier in the year, on the inevitability of a lockout.
Here’s a transcript of the full segment on this specific topic:
Scott Braun: Are you concerned when you hear the commissioner and owners talk about how it’s almost a guarantee that we’re going to have some type of lockout? I know Tony Clark, your colleague, has mentioned this before. Stance is, why the heck would you want to stop the sport, even in the offseason, for any period of time, right?
Bruce Meyer: Yeah, I mean look, it’s up to the owners whether to do a lockout or not. They did it last time, and I’ve seen the comments that suggest they’re definitely going to do it this time. It doesn’t surprise me, but it does suggest that, you know, what are we doing then in the months before then, when we’re supposedly bargaining in good faith if a lockout is a sure thing? To be clear, a lockout is a weapon, it’s a weapon that management uses in a labor dispute. It’s their decision to lock the doors and close the camps. Last time as you remember during the lockout they took all the players’ pictures off the website, so that they’re not promoting the game. It’s a bad thing for the game, it’s a bad thing for fans, it’s a bad thing obviously for players and their families. You know, you hope and expect that both sides come in negotiating in good faith with no preconceived notions, but the reality is that a lockout is their main economic weapon. So, we’ll certainly be prepared for that if that’s how it goes.
I’ve said this before on more than one occasion, but it’s worth remembering that the PA usually abstains from commenting on rumors or reports, instead keeping their stances on various subjects in-house, avoiding leaks, etc. Which is how these kinds of negotiations are supposed to go down. Manfred and the owners love to negotiate in public, however, and continually try to either (1) drag the PA into also doing this or (2) know that, with the PA willing to be silent, they can freely attempt to influence fans and the media on a given topic. Here, though, Manfred bringing up the prospect of a lockout as something that was all but guaranteed to happen, as something we should expect as a regular part of the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement, was too much for the PA to stand idly by on. Which is how executive director Tony Clark ended up responding to Manfred’s comments in the original interview, and now you have Meyer fielding a question on them months later.
Meyer saying that, “what are we doing then in the months before then, when we’re supposedly bargaining in good faith if a lockout is a sure thing?” fits right next to a point that I brought up back in January when Manfred’s interview with The Athletic first ran:
Everything else is public relations. Manfred is out here talking about the value of lockouts and trying to spin them as a positive so that you believe this is the only acceptable course of action, so that you don’t judge them negatively when they enact another one. It’s January of 2025, nearly two years before the current CBA expires. Is Manfred trying to say that he truly believes that there is simply no way the two sides can meet each other productively and work toward a new CBA in those two years? That locking the players out, which just so happens to conveniently keep them from striking if the need arose another five months after the expiration of the existing CBA, is the only way that either side will show any movement? There’s no way he believes that, but he wants you to, and it’s worth thinking about why that is.
Manfred’s words were not spoken by someone preparing to bargain in good faith, just as they were not before the expiration of the previous CBA, when a summer of stall tactics just to get to the lockout and attempt to force the union to negotiate on a shorter timeline was the play. And even he is aware of as much at this point, that he showed too much of their hand far too soon — as Meyer said, the players are now prepared for this possibility, as they were given a two-year heads up, and there have been other issues, as well. Like, for instance, MLB and Manfred realizing that whoops, potential broadcast partners don’t love the idea of all of this lockout and strike talk while they’re doing their own negotiating with the league.
Surely there will be further responses from MLB on the issue of lockouts — especially if media keeps reminding Manfred of the things he himself said on the subject — but the meaning of all of this won’t change, regardless of what Manfred or the league says next. Lockouts are an “economic weapon,” as Meyer put it, and MLB is happy to wield it. They just don’t want you to think that they are, or that they’re simply preempting a strike that the union wouldn’t even be able to legally call without proof that the league isn’t negotiating in good faith in the first place.
The solution to all of these supposed problems is the same: negotiate in good faith, in the roughly year-and-a-half left before the CBA expires. An impossible ask of the league, sure, but whose fault — and whose decision — is that, exactly?
It’s been a busy time at the day job and freelancing of late, so here’s some catching up for you.
My work at FOX Sports doesn’t have a byline on it, but in addition to my daily roundup of the previous day’s games (Last Night in Baseball) and all of the news desk work I do, there’s also time for the occasional feature. Here are the last two I wrote: one that published on July 3, showcasing the home run leader in all 50 states (and D.C.) — with a fancy graphic included — and one from July 8, on Manny Machado and the possibility that he becomes the eighth-ever 3,000 hit, 500-homer player in MLB history.
The states one has the graphic, yes, but also a bunch of notes about the things I noticed while putting together all of that information in the first place. Barry Bonds has outhit a number of the leaders from other states, and also entire states — things of that nature. There’s some real remembering some guys happening in there, too, if the Phil Plantier mention didn’t tip you off to that out of the gate.
For Baseball Prospectus, I wrote about how the A’s aren’t breaking any new ground with their groundbreaking ceremony, and the many, many reasons — hundreds of hundreds of millions of them, in fact — that you still don’t have to believe that there is ever going to be an A’s stadium built in Las Vegas.
And lastly, Paste Magazine has long had a video games section — Paste Games — and I’ve written for it twice per month for the last few years. Paste Games has become its own vertical — still with Paste Magazine, but with its own separate setup a la Splinter, A.V. Club, etc. — and it’s now called Endless Mode. It launched on July 1, and I’ll be writing their four times per month; the first of my features went live on July 2, and is on the 20th anniversary of Killer7. If you’re into that sort of thing, too, in addition to the baseball stuff.
Oh, while we’re on the subject, a book I contributed multiple essays to is available to order now. Joysticks to Haptics: A Visual History of Video Game Controllers is by Lost in Cult in partnership with HarperCollins, and features myself, among many others, going through, well, the history of video game controllers. My essays focus heavily on the transition from primarily 2D to primarily 3D games, and what the designs of controllers from that era can tell us about the evolution of game design. It’s available all over the place, but here’s the link to the Bookshop.org page, specifically.
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