Philadelphia Phillies: Players and fans should stand in solidarity

The Philadelphia Phillies shouldn’t risk their players to accommodate owners.

The NBA is coming back this summer. The NHL, similarly, is coming back this summer. The NFL remains on schedule for a Fall kickoff, and sports like professional wrestling have never left the airwaves, even if they occasionally had to switch to pre-taped shows.

And yet, baseball remains stuck in a purgatorial impasse, as the players and team owners remain far apart on the financial and logistical hurdles needed to get a season off the ground.

If this makes you angry, I get that.

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Believe you me, nothing would be better than to have baseball back on screens nationwide, as a lack of live sports has been brutal to fans the world over – especially for writers like yours truly. If all parties want to get a deal done, and games can be played in a safe way, why on earth are we still sitting around wondering what Didi Gregorius is going to look like in a Philadelphia Phillies uniform?

40 million people have lost their jobs and a bunch of millionaires are arguing about minor details? That’s rather tone-deaf, no?

It’s… complicated.

On the surface, it appears easy. Players already have contracts, the season will all but certainly be shortened, why not pay players at their agreed-upon rate for the number of games played and be done with it? Because the league’s owners don’t want that to happen.

With in-stadium revenue streams all but certainly unavailable for the entirety of 2020 due to, you know, the global health pandemic, teams aren’t looking to pay out the outlandishly expensive deals they’ve agreed on with players like Bryce Harper with only television revenues to tide them over.

Sidebar: How can these teams, all of which are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, not have some money set aside for a rainy day? They mustn’t be very fiscally responsible.

On May 26th, the MLB proposed a potential 82-game plan to start the season that would cut player salaries by as much as 80(!)- percent. By proposing the plan and making the details public, the MLB hoped that public pressure would force players – and their union – to cave and return to action on a very-owner-friendly financial arrangement. The players union eventually countered, suggesting a 114-game plan with no further salary cap cuts but it was outright rejected by the league.

And here we are, no deal, no options on the table, and (probably) no baseball over the horizon.

While it would be easy to blame all sides evenly or just wipe our collective hands of the situation altogether, now, more than ever, is a crucial time for fans to band together and stand with the players. I mean these men are being asked to leave their families for months to play baseball without fans and city hop during a global pandemic. I know the concept of hazard pay isn’t really relevant to a sport but is this really the time to strong-arm players into playing for pennies on the dollar? Shouldn’t they be lauded – and financially compensated – for being willing to put their very health on the line to play a game for fans at home – not to mention who owners really care about, advertisers?

Is it crazy to pay any player $35 million a year to play a game? Totally but if an owner was willing to give a player that big of a sum to wrangle them away from a division rival (Harper), it’s in rather poor taste to take that away because conditions have changed. If Harper decides Philly isn’t a big enough market and would rather play for the Dodgers, he can’t just terminate his deal and accept a $400 million deal from Magic Johnson and company. Workers, regardless of profession, need to band together against exploitation – that’s the whole reason why professional sports leagues have unions to begin with.

After all, no one goes to buy an owner’s jersey at the team shop. The players are quite literally the team, and get fans to show up or watch on tv.

Would I rather have baseball to watch on a beautiful summer afternoon than not? You bet, but the idea of exploiting players at a time like this by effectively forcing them to play on a raw deal just doesn’t sit right with me. If the MLB isn’t willing to play fair with its players, I’d be just as happy to wait until next season to watch my beloved Philadelphia Phillies play ball, even if it’ll stink in the short-term.