Steve Cohen really should have logged off

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Major League Baseball might be taking steps to improve the living and working conditions of present-day minor-league baseball players, but what about those that were already ground into a fine powder by those horrors? Consider, for a moment, that after essentially doubling minor leaguers salaries, making it so they were no longer responsible for paying the clubhouse attendant’s wages via tips, providing for at least some of the players’ food, and recently promising to pay for the housing of “certain” minor leaguers, Minor League Baseball is still nowhere near the situation they should be: housing covered for all players, a living wage, equipment paid for by the clubs instead of the players, and so on. Now, consider that the minor-league players who were around for years before all of MLB’s recent upgrades didn’t even have access to that much.

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Round-up: The Chop, Commissioners, MLB for cord cutters

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I wrote about the failure that is the Tomahawk Chop making its way to the 2021 World Series back on Monday, but I certainly have not been alone this week in publishing pieces on the subject. Rob Manfred opened his mouth before Game 1 to let some bullshit spill out, about how MLB’s teams only market themselves regionally, and therefore no one outside of Georgia should be concerned with the chop, but also, Native Americans everywhere definitely support the chop; that certainly gave some folks an angle to work with.

Clinton Yates was one of those people, for The Undefeated, in a piece headlined, “Manfred misses the mark with Braves.” The focus here is on how the chop and MLB’s insistence that this is all progress and everyone who needs to be fine with the chop is fine with it is simply an extension of white supremacy. Yates also spoke with Natalie Welch, who participated in the video MLB and the Braves are now touting as proof that the chop has the seal of approval of Native Americans:

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In CBA talks, all that matters is what’s said behind closed doors

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My latest for Baseball Prospectus took a look at the growing whispers around the ongoing collective bargaining occurring between Major League Baseball and the Players Association. It’s behind BP’s paywall for subscribers, but I can give you the gist of it and a quote before we dive in a little further:

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Names and cultures have changed, but the Tomahawk Chop persists

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The Atlanta Braves are in the 2021 World Series, which means the Tomahawk Chop is also going to be in the 2021 World Series. Atlanta was briefly forced to confront the racist chant back in the 2019 postseason, but the lack of fans at games in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic gave them an opportunity to bury all of that talk of potential change, and now here we are. The Washington Football Team is a thing, the Kansas City Chiefs have enacted some protocols to combat the culture of racism in their fan base, and the Cleveland Guardians will officially replace the Cleveland Indians in 2022, but the Braves? They are still the Braves, and they are still chopping.

Let’s go back to 2019 for a moment. It was then that Cardinals’ reliever Ryan Helsley, a member of the Cherokee Nation, spoke out against Atlanta’s use of the chop. The Braves’ response was… lacking:

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On concerns about MLB’s minor-league housing mandate

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MLB is going to mandate that teams provide housing for “certain” minor leaguers, news that was broken on Sunday by ESPN’s Jeff Passan and that we’ve already discussed in this space. However, as was pointed out on Monday, that’s about all we know: that piece mostly focused on the need for housing assistance and why, exactly, MLB has decided to reverse course on the issue now (the short version: they’re trying to appease players who are moving ever-closing to unionizing.) What we’ll focus on this time around, instead, is what the housing assistance should look like. It’s good to get these thoughts in order before the actual shape of things is revealed, so you already know what to look out for and be preemptively mad about.

Back in June, Beyond the Box Score’s Sheryl Ring brought up some legitimate concerns about MLB providing housing for minor-league players, having to do with landlord-tenant relationships, corporate housing, and more:

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MLB will mandate housing assistance for MiLB players in 2022

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Details remain essentially nonexistent, but we at least know this: all 30 of MLB’s teams will be mandated to provide housing for minor-league players starting with the 2022 season. No longer will it be select clubs deciding to pay out stipends or cover the full costs of housing, while others like the Cardinals and A’s plug their ears and wait for the season to end so they can stop being bothered about the horrific living conditions their players are dealing with.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news on Sunday night, and again, said news is vague. We don’t yet know if teams will be providing stipends to their players, as the San Francisco Giants have been doing for (some of) their minor-league players. We don’t know if furnished apartments are going to be provided, as has happened for Astros’ minor leaguers in 2021. We also don’t know which minor-league players are going to be provided with this assistance: all Passan was able to report at this time is that “certain” minor-league players would be provided housing.

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Maybe things are changing in the MiLB labor landscape

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It feels like we’re close to something in the Minor League Baseball labor movement, no? Maybe that’s just my optimism for a better future for those players talking, but there is a reason I’m as optimistic about it as I’ve been of late. That’s not to say I think it’s inevitable, but where in the past I’ve thought, “yes, it’s technically possible for organization and unionization in MiLB,” it’s starting to feel like it’s a thing that could actually happen at some point.

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Round-up: Athletes as workers, rediscovering America’s pastime, and the NWSL

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I’ve been pretty lax of late pointing y’all toward things I’ve been reading that I also think you should read, which was kind of the fault of a whole bunch of factors, but hey. Let’s change that up, and dedicate this whole newsletter entry to stuff I’ve been reading that I think you should read.

First up is Britni de la Cretaz and the return of Mic. Their first feature for the relaunched publication is on the fact we’re not used to seeing athletes as workers, even though they have to deal with management, even though they are not in control of capital within their own leagues, even though there are plenty of professional athletes out there who are making less money each year than some of the folks reading this right now. The topic is not only one that is close to me, but de la Cretaz spoke to me a bit about the subject, and I’m quoted in there a few times.

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The Rays two-city plan is in the news again

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I’m just going to outright say that I don’t know where this whole “Tampa Bay wants to be in Montreal, too” thing is going. Is Rays’ ownership simply trying to leverage one city against the other until their deal with Tropicana finally ends in a few years, in the hopes one will decide that they want this particular MLB team in their city full time by then? Is the idea to try to prove that St. Petersburg isn’t a fit for the Rays because they aren’t even really trying to stop them from spending half of their season in another country? Is Stuart Sternberg working for the United States government to invade Quebec with agents disguised as Floridian baseball fans, forcing Canada to secede the territory and breaking the longstanding agreement with America’s neighbor that defined the northern border of Maine centuries ago? Hey, that’s no less ridiculous than whatever else the plan might actually be, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that this is all an op.

I haven’t written about the two-city plan for a couple of years now, in part because there haven’t been any real updates, and also because what else was there to say?

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Oracle Park concession workers a reminder that striking works

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The strike is the most powerful tool in a union’s toolbox. I could say something sappier like solidarity is the most powerful tool, and that’s true, but what you do with that solidarity matters, and the most effective and impactful thing a union can do with their solidarity is go on strike and win what is theirs from the bosses that are attempting to keep it from them.

Right behind the strike, and nearly as powerful, is the threat of a strike. If management believes that there is legitimacy behind a potential strike, that the union is going to hold fast and together and wait out management in a way that will harm the latter’s bottom line, then they are more likely to negotiate, to give in, to agree to give the union what they want. The actions of UNITE HERE Local 2 are a good reminder of this: the concession workers of the San Francisco Giants’ Oracle Park overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike just a few weeks ago, and now, on Thursday, they will vote on a new contract that contains the wins extracted from Bon Appetit, and which would avert a strike occurring during the Giants’ upcoming postseason run.

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