BASEBALL NEEDS BADASS OWNERS — NOT A SALARY CAP — AND WHO CARES ABOUT TONY CLARK?
Prepare for 9 1/2 months of madness, when Rob Manfred and team bosses push for a cap that limits salaries — and without Tony Clark, just understand Bryce Harper and the players will push for a strike
If Tony Clark rooked the union and spent phony millions on OneTeam Partners and Players Way — one involved licensing, the other involved kids — the question isn’t what happens to him in a probe by the Eastern District of New York. The question is how hundreds of major-league players will respond as they try to bury 30 owners who want to bury them.
They have no executive director after Clark resigned Tuesday, in part because he had a relationship with his sister-in-law — take that, Casey Wasserman. But does anyone actually think the union will cave and allow Major League Baseball to launch a salary cap, the acidic ambition of every ownership weenie, before the collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1? With Bruce Meyer remaining as the prime negotiator — the Major League Baseball Players Association won’t install new leadership — we still know what will happen throughout the spring, summer and fall. The union will stalk commissioner Rob Manfred and every team boss despising the king of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Mark Walter, who continues to stampede the cap and wants to win a third consecutive World Series.
Baseball does not need a cap. The sport needs better owners, badasses, equipped to spend and compete in 2027 — and beyond. Why does Arte Moreno own the Los Angeles Angels when his team hasn’t made the postseason since 2014 and allowed pitcher Tyler Skaggs to die from drugs? Why does Jerry Reinsdorf own the Chicago White Sox when he never has spent more than $75 million on a free agent and rarely has reached the playoffs, winning once in 45 seasons? Why allow teams in Miami and Pittsburgh and other towns where owners won’t ante up? Why can’t owners figure out a lame future in the otherwise smoking television industry, where some teams want freedom — “We love our independence,” said Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, who owns the Marquee Sports Network — and weaklings need help from the commissioner?
What baseball needs — to raise a faltering financial bar that confirms its place as the national past-its-time — are more owners such as Steve Cohen. When asked this week about Walter and the Dodgers, who already have spent $527 million this season, he said, “They have the ability to spend. So do I, by the way.” The New York Mets have spent $481 million and continue to shame 11 teams with payrolls under $132 million — with Miami at $78 million, increasing to Cleveland, Washington, Tampa Bay, the White Sox, Colorado, St. Louis, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and West Sacramento, still home of the Athletics.
The players carry on. “We’re not going to get a search going. Bargaining here,” said pitcher Brent Suter of the Angels, who belongs to the union’s executive subcommittee. “We’re going to have an interim and keep everything as stable as we can this year. … The ship is strong. Let me tell you, the ship is strong. We just need to make the right decisions today and moving forward, we’ll be just fine.”
The NBA has a cap and continues to suffer with ugly front-office tanking. Let’s keep eyeballs on the MLB owners. Generally, they are the bastards who demand high sums at ballparks and won’t reinvest revenues into the payroll. The San Diego Padres are for sale and chairman John Seidler said, “We’ve had tremendous interest. There has been interest — some parties that have been reported in the press, others have not. There are more parties interested than has been reported.” Imagine if the aforementioned teams were on the market — and not the White Sox, who MIGHT sell to Justin Ishbia between 2029 and 2033, when Reinsdorf will be gaining on age 100.
All anyone needs to know is that Bryce Harper and Manny Machado hate the salary cap. Both are fond of the Dodgers Way, including Machado, who plays for the rival Padres. “I love it. They figured out a way to do it,” Machado said. “I think every team has the ability to do it. I hope all 30 teams could learn from that.”
“I love what the Dodgers do, obviously,” said Harper, who plays for Philadelphia, a team that spends. “They pay the money, they spend the money. I mean, they’re a great team. They run their team like a business, and they run it the right way.”
Already, Harper told Manfred to “get the f— out of our clubhouse” before he spoke about the salary cap. That happened in July. What’s possibly next? Harper will lead the journey and push for a December strike, we realize. MLB likely did homework on Clark and fed the federal investigation into union-owned OneTeam Partners — described as uniting “elite athletes by giving them platforms, resources and expertise necessary to maximize their collective value” — and Players Way, an initiative that supposedly held few events after the union helped with almost $10 million. That story was first reported by ESPN, which recently signed a new broadcast agreement with Manfred.
See how this works?
“This happening during the investigation is not overly surprising,” said Mets second baseman Marcus Semien, who belongs to the executive subcommittee. “But it still hurts. It’s still something I’m processing, and I just want our player group to move forward this year and be able to have a good year of negotiating with (union) leadership that cares about what players want.
“The timing being February, when we’re looking forward to December when the CBA expires, is better than it happening in November if something came out.”
It will be difficult focusing on a season when the Dodgers, Mets, Blue Jays and a handful of others are serious about a championship. Most teams are waiting for Dec. 1. Already, Aaron Judge wonders why the New York Yankees waited so long before finally re-signing Cody Bellinger. Is owner Hal Steinbrenner serious? “It was brutal,” Judge said. “Early on, it was pretty tough to watch. I’m like, ‘Man, we’re the New York Yankees. Let’s go out there and get the right people.’ Let’s sign these guys right now and start adding more pieces because I’m seeing other teams around the league get better. They’re making trades. They’re signing big prospects or big players. And we’re sitting there for a while kind of making smaller moves.”
Did Judge vent to the front office? “Yeah, oh, yeah,” he said.
The World Baseball Classic, a boon for the owners, won’t have the same meaning next month. Shohei Ohtani won’t pitch. Mike Trout is unable to land insurance for an Angels contract that brings him $35 million this season. Their showdown — Ohtani winning with a strikeout — ended the 2023 version with Japan winning the championship. Also, Jose Altuve has no insurance and won’t play for Team Venezeula, while Carlos Correa is in the same boat and can’t play for Team Puerto Rico.
So, more sports chaos is underway. The NBA is in an ownership integrity storm. College basketball is a gambling festival. Newspapers are dumping sports sections.
But you do have me — very prepared as I was in 1994. I called out the owners before the labor impasse, which canceled the World Series, and angered Reinsdorf, who tried to get rid of me at the Sun-Times. I won and stuck around until 2008, when I resigned after bosses couldn’t figure out the online process when we were in Beijing. Now, I write on a site that won’t interfere with my columns the way Sun-Times owners hacked them. Didn’t an executive editor demand all pieces involving Reinsdorf be faxed to his home?
Watch that paper blunder over the next 9 1/2 months. The editors will dazzle up the White Sox, as if they matter, and never upset Reinsdorf. Those are not editors who care about readers. And he, obviously, is not an owner.
Bring it on.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.