The Out in Left Weekly: March 24, 2024
Blake Snell, stadium workers, and more
Blake Snell signs and owners avoid criticism
Pitcher Blake Snell signed a two-year, $62 million deal with the San Francisco Giants this week. According to the baseball world, it was a disaster for the player and his agent.
“MLB Twitter drags Scott Boras for fumbling Blake Snell contract,” Fansided pointed out.
“For Blake Snell and others, Scott Boras’ strategy costs them short-term,” The Athletic wrote.
“Blake Snell’s contract looks like trouble,” Defector opined. (If $62 million is trouble, then sentence me to prison.)
It’s easy to deride millionaires with inflated egos. Snell, a 31-year old, two-time Cy Young Award winner, wanted a long-term mega-deal and Boris, a self-aggrandizing hair plug, didn’t deliver one.
But this narrative lets off the hook billionaire team owners who are even more contemptible. They didn’t want to sign one of the best pitchers in the game because it would have cost money, and they maintain a labor system that is designed to screw the Blake Snells of the world. So why does the media take the owners' side?
According to Adam Johnson, co-host of the podcast Citation Needed, it’s an anti-labor ideology that has seeped into our bones, even more so now that most of sports media is run by three multibillion dollar conglomerates: Fox, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
“I was listening to [ESPN personality] Mike Greenberg,” Johnson recounted on the podcast Tipping Pitches during the 2021 MLB lockout, “and he said ‘Oh, this is just millionaires and billionaires arguing over this and that.” It’s a framing that advantages the owners because “people hear that and they think [the players are] just a bunch of rich babies.”
The media also breathlessly analyzes player contracts, which are publicly reported, but information on league and team profits are kept at Fort Knox. And Johnson argues that we should annualize a player’s contract over their lifetime, as opposed to the term of the contract, since playing careers are so short. Team owners, on the other hand, can profit from their teams forever.
Snell didn’t get the contract he was hoping for, and now he’ll have to answer for that the rest of the year and it will impact him for the rest of his life. Up in the executive suites, the owners are smirking and gently shaking each other's hands in the way that familiar rich white men do, proud that they once again suppressed labor costs with impunity.
Stadium workers demand greater pay and benefits
In a previous weekly post, I highlighted the news that the Philadelphia Phillies are replacing the popular Dollar Dog Nights with $5 Buy One, Get One Dog Nights—it rolls off the tongue. The team stands to make hundreds of thousands more in sales, and I wondered if “that revenue [will] be used to pay gameday workers more? Improve the quality of hot dogs? Lower ticket prices? Or even help sign one of the top free agent pitchers still on the market?”
Now, food service workers at Philadelphia’s triplex of sports stadiums are picketing, demanding a standard minimum wage and health benefits. Aramark, the company that handles concessions at Citizens Bank Park and the other venues, has a chance to do the right thing, but they’re more likely to string along labor negotiations before eventually compromising, then blame higher costs on those very workers. Like baseball, it’s the American way.
Phillies partner on project to redevelop parking lots into… parking garages
The Phillies announced this week that they are partnering on a project to redevelop the South Philly sports complex. Hotels, retail, event space, and some homes will arise from what the Philadelphia Inquirer called one of the largest surface parking areas in North America.
There’s a lot to unpack with this project, considering its social, environmental, and economic impacts. Luckily, the developer’s phased approach will allow for hot takes whenever I need content. For now, I’ll say that the plan to convert 22,000 surface parking stalls into 10,000 garaged stalls is both encouraging and frustrating.
TL;DR from my last essay: sports stadiums should be near people and should have no parking. If Philadelphia and its teams want to redevelop the publicly-owned sports complex, then they should construct a dense, car-free, mixed-use neighborhood, rather than a privatized pleasure-plex.
MLB players union seeks new leadership
In 2022, minor leaguers unionized with the Major League Baseball Players Association, and overnight the union gained thousands of members. Those members seem to be exercising their newfound power.
In what is being called a “coup” or a “mutiny” by traditional media outlets (see: first blurb above), the players made a move to replace MLBPA lead negotiator Bruce Meyer with Harry Marino, a young lawyer who organized minor leaguers and helped them win some of the most significant labor concessions in recent sports history. The effort to promote Marino failed, but only because executive director Tony Clark refused to fire Meyer. It shows that the players are dissatisfied both with MLBPA’s longtime leadership and the current collective bargaining agreement. They are angling for a more aggressive, efficient, and responsive union.
Though the players lost the battle—it’s bizarre the union was their foe—it’s a pot that’s about to boil over, and it has national implications. The labor-management dynamic affects MLB’s game product, of course, but more importantly, the MLBPA is arguably the most powerful union in the United States. Its successes (and failures) reflect the state of the labor movement and the economy at large. I know what side I’m on.
Recommendations
Because I wrote this column about the Padres’ Ha-Seong Kim: “The Shortstop with the Tall Order” for San Diego Magazine. (link)
Because I don’t have anything to add to the Ohtani discourse and Craig Calcaterra’s is the best analysis I’ve read on the gambling scandal: “Cup of Coffee Extra: Breaking down the Shohei Ohtani-Ippei Mizuhara story.” (link)
Because The Process is dead, long live The Process: “What Really Happened to Markelle Fultz” by Nick Friedell for The Ringer. (link)
My next monthly essay is about stadium development and gentrification and will be published on April 7.