At this point, political humor is dead. To quote Penny Arcade: “It’s like trying to make fun of a clown. What, are you going to make fun of his tiny car? His floppy shoes? It just doesn’t work.”  

Similarly, we’ve run through all the stand-up specials, animated sitcoms, obscure British 90s comedies, documentaries about how Earth is amazing and we’re destroying it, documentaries about the Universe and how the sun is going to burn out and kill us all, documentaries about murders, documentaries about cats, documentaries about murders by cats (I haven’t watched this Tiger King bullshit, but I can’t imagine everyone getting so excited over anything else) and Dawn Korean Baseball (Go Dinos! Rawr!)

We’ve even (shiver) spent time with our families. 

Fortunately, Major League Baseball has finally gotten off the couch, taken a shower, shaved and put on something other than yoga pants for the first time in three months to provide us with Amusing Distraction.  Not with anything so pedestrian as actually playing games; instead, they have decided to dust off an old favorite rainy day boardgame called Labor Unrest!

Yes, the Owners and Players are dicking around about how much the players will get paid in the likely event that the (half) season begins but that fans are not allowed in the stands.  It’s one of those wonderful situations where 98% of the people involved are being assholes, so you can basically just sit back and watch it burn.  

This is baseball’s big chance to reverse years of doomsaying trends about the aging fanbase, lower attendance and the drop in youth participation.  The nation is literally starved for Sports Content, to the extent that I watched the American Cornhole Organization Championships.  In my defense, I was misled by the description touting that the competition would crown the “Queen of Cornhole.”  But even after it became obvious that it involved beanbags, I was still desperate enough to watch.  Basketball and hockey are still getting their shit together—this is MLB’s chance to be Queen of Summer one more time.  And the two sides are going to compete to see who can shit the bed most thoroughly, while we all roll around in it.

As you probably won’t remember because we all have mush for brains now, the league and the Major League Baseball Players Association struck a deal back in late March (really, Latest March since it lasted 288 days) regarding a number of issues related to not being able to play baseball.  There’s a pretty decent summary here. https://apnews.com/dd87bcc774d608e53624594fe56fab0c. 

For our purposes, the important bits are that the majority of players’ salaries are pro-rated for the number of games played—if a guy is slated to make $5 million and only 81 out of 162 games get played, he gets $2.5 million.  There were also provisions for advance payment of some salary to keep players afloat.  Hell, there was even a pretty decent provision for calculation of service time—an issue for young ballplayers and restricted free agents that was a firestorm before the world went into the bunker.  In exchange, the players union agreed not to file grievances for full salary. 

However, there is now a Great Deal of Rumbling about this deal.  Like, was it actually a deal, or just an agreement to agree later?

MLB (which is to say Semen-Encrusted-Sock-Puppet Rob Manfred and the 30 billionaire hands up his ass) proposed A Plan to get baseball restarted by Early July.  Yay!  82 game season, wrapping up as normal by the end of September. Yay! A lot of players will get less than their 82-game pro rated salary. Ya…wait?

After the union shot down a trial balloon proposing a 50-50 revenue split (too close to a salary cap), the owners have now proposed a sliding scale of reduction—the more you were slated to make, the less of it you’ll see.  ESPN’s reporting on this is truly horrendous, and they appear to be the sole league mouthpiece on this- the explanation is ambiguous and the numbers don’t add up (shocker) but bottom line appears to break down thusly:

82-Game Prorated:   What you get under the Plan:

$285K         $262K

$506K           $434K

$1.01M          $736K

$2.53M         $1.64M

$5.06M         $2.95M

$7.59M         $4.05M

$10.1M          $5.15M

$12.7M         $6.05M

$15.2M         $6.95M

$17.7M          $7.84M

The shitbird league “believes language in the deal calls for good-faith negotiations with the union about the economic feasibility of playing with no fans, which MLB expects to do upon a return.”

Now, the concept that a game played without fans is worth less money than a game played with fans is not horseshit.  Something like 30% of MLB revenue was from ticket sales in 2017, although that loss is partially offset by the fact that teams would save on overhead by not having to put on the full three-ring-circus that is the average MLB game today. Add in lost concessions and jersey sales and genuine-game-spit-on-baseball sales and there’s no question that each player is not bringing in the same number of dollars per game without fans there.  Hence, paying him the same amount as he would have made with all those juicy wallets in the stands seems a bit odd to most American ears.

But that’s not the economic basis of the game.  If there was straight revenue-sharing, then yes, but neither the players nor the owners actually want that.  For the players, it sounds like a salary cap, and God forbid the Yankees and/or Red Sox not be able to buy a playoff spot every year.  For the owners, it takes away all the little nooks, crannies and edges where they can 1. make extra money either through new and creative gouges (“additional revenue streams”), and 2. use accounting practices that would make the Mafia blush to hide revenue. 

Now, as far as I can tell none of the players want to take anything less than the pro-rated amount discussed in March.  But the players on the lower end aren’t in much of a position to shitcan the season, as they tend to have shorter careers and are pretty replaceable.  MLB has cleverly made the burden on them relatively light in this Plan, with most player (65%) getting most of their money (about 75-80% of the prorated amount).  Bird. Hand. Bush. Etc.  The seven players who are losing out the most (making over $30 million) are likely going to continue to have a hefty revenue stream in the future.  And because unions are by their nature creatures of the mob, it’s going to be interesting to see if the top earners are going to be able to convince enough of the proles to sacrifice the season for their benefit. 

Normally, this would be the time where all the writers at Deaddeadspin and most of the folks on this site would light the pitchforks and sharpen the torches, screaming for the blood of the owners to wet down the Slip’n’Slide of Class Equality.  And I’m not going to stop them, because who doesn’t love a party with a Slip’n’Slide?  

But let’s take a moment and remember Noah Syndergaard.

Syndergaard, a pitcher for the NY LolMets, recently took to The Twitter

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29215522/noah-syndergaard-suing-new-york-city-landlord-see-court-pal

to fire off a salty jet of brainjaculate related to a lawsuit filed against him by his erstwhile NYC landlord.  Syndergaard signed a lease for a $27,000 per month three-bedroom penthouse for the season, despite the fact that he had Tommy John surgery and won’t be playing before 2021.  He apparently decided (reasonably) that he did not want to relocate to NYC at this particular moment, and so decided not to take possession.  However, in New York City you remain liable for the remainder of your lease if you decide to break it (except for some circumstances like domestic violence, age, etc.).  And I looked at his lease—no early termination clause.  Well done, Mr. Syndergaard’s former lawyer.  He offered two months rent, and the owner (wisely) refused and chose to sue to collect the full amount due.  Syndergaard decided that this was Extortion and An Affront to Justice and called out his landlord on Twitter.  No, motherfucker, it’s a contract.  If you feel like you shouldn’t have to pay as much because coronavirus upended your life, that’s fine— I certainly feel that way for people who aren’t being paid $9 million to rehab their injury,  so I guess I have to feel that way for you too.  But don’t then Take to Twitter again https://nypost.com/2020/05/25/mets-noah-syndergaard-uses-mlb-coronavirus-deal-to-explain-rent-dispute/

and try to draw a false distinction between you stiffing your landlord and MLB trying to stiff you.  You’re a shitbird, Noah.  Own it.

I used to really love Pope Paul VI’s “If you want peace, work for justice.”  And then I realized that for most people, “justice” means “what I think is fair to me”.  And most people are (appropriately) self-interested and (inappropriately) lacking in empathy and a perspective outside their own head.  Or in Mr. Syndergaard’s case, a perspective outside his own ass.                  

No doubt the owners are wrong here.  They’re in a position to weather the storm of a shortened or lost season better than even the wealthiest player, and the value of their teams will rise more in the next two years than the amount of money they would lose by honoring what seems to be a fair deal for straight pro-rata payment.

But the loudest of the leading players are going to end up ceding the moral high ground in short fucking order.  They’re going to tell their rank and file that they should hold out for principle and the good of the sport, while they have historically been willing to fuck over young players and minor leaguers on service time because it wasn’t in their own best interests.    

I was a fucking fanatic growing up, collecting baseball sticker books.  I still remember the weird-ass picture of Lloyd Moseby staring out from the Blue Jays page.  I remember 1994, and suddenly feeling like I couldn’t invest in the sport because everyone involved were greedy shits and taking a side meant arguing which pile of sun-rotting turds smelled worse.  It took me five years to go to a game again. As much as I claim not to care, it pains me to think that this Golden Opportunity to reach new fans could become the grave of some other kid’s love of the game.