OPINION:
The reports about free agent outfielder Kyle Tucker signing his earth-shattering four-year, $240 million contract with the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers surfaced three days before the late Curt Flood’s 88th birthday — an early celebration of Flood’s legacy.
Flood’s historic 1970 antitrust lawsuit after refusing a trade from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies would ultimately fail in the courts — in 1972 the Supreme Court upheld baseball’s reserve clause that held players captive. But it paved the way for an arbitrator’s ruling three years later that led to free agency and Tucker’s stunning contract, which could prove to be the catalyst to a work stoppage in baseball at the end of 2026.
The game may have been heading in that direction anyway, with the deep-pocketed Dodgers winning their second straight World Series and already wielding a payroll that dwarfs many other teams.
But the Tucker deal and adding him to a lineup with three high-priced future Hall of Famers — Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani — may have pushed the issue of a salary cap in baseball over the top.
“The Tucker deal, which, even after deferrals, includes a record average annual value of $57.1 million, will further embolden Commissioner Rob Manfred and all of the owners who want to push for a salary cap,” The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal wrote.
“The anger from baseball fans is understandable and warranted,” ESPN baseball writer Jeff Passan said recently. “What both owners and players need to do as the collective bargaining agreement expires is listen to the fans … Fans right now feel like this game is unfair.”
You can certainly understand how fans feel that way.
The Dodgers’ current payroll is $414 million, according to the website Spotrac.com. That’s four times more than the lowest spending team in baseball, the Miami Marlins. In between, 16 other teams are spending half what Los Angeles is shelling out.
Of the top four professional sports — MLB, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL — only baseball does not have a salary cap.
Teams can spend as much as they want, but they have to pay a luxury tax penalty if they go over a set payroll amount. Last season Los Angeles paid $169 million in luxury tax.
That hasn’t seemed to slow the Dodgers down.
So the calls are growing louder for a salary cap, not just among fans, but the owners in the rear-view mirror as well.
“The only way to fix baseball is to do a salary cap and a floor,” Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort told the Denver Gazette in March. Other owners, such as the Baltimore Orioles’ David Rubenstein, have also spoken of the need for a cap.
The problem? Most believe the players union will never agree to a salary cap, with the emphasis on never.
It’s what they went to war for in the strike of 1994 that shut down the postseason and nearly destroyed the game, and there is no reason to believe the players have any less resolve this time around if the owners agree to lock them out at the end of the current labor agreement in December.
Most owners weren’t around during the 1994 strike and didn’t witness the damage.
Here’s what also wasn’t around in 1994 — Donald Trump as president.
He is the wild card in nearly every aspect of American business.
He rarely lets a hot news topic go by without expressing his interest or exercising his influence, and, having covered the 1994 negotiations, I can tell you it was a hot news topic that went beyond the sports pages.
Then-President Bill Clinton tried to intervene, bringing both sides to the White House for negotiations, an effort that embarrassingly failed. He then introduced his “Major League Baseball Restoration Act,” which went nowhere.
If there is a work stoppage in baseball, there will be no keeping Donald Trump out of it. He’ll likely see it as a winning issue for him and one that, even in the smorgasbord of daily news that devours the Trump presidency, will be front and center.
He can’t keep his hands off the sports section. He has weighed in on the Hall of Fame, demanding that the late Pete Rose be inducted. He has threatened to pull World Cup games out of cities he is not pleased with, yet received a manufactured peace prize from the world soccer association FIFA. He wants the new Washington Commanders football stadium named after him.
Saturday night on his Truth Social app, he announced he plans to sign an executive order preventing any football games from going head-to-head with the annual Army and Navy game.
“Under my Administration, the second Saturday in December belongs to Army-Navy, and ONLY Army-Navy! I will soon sign a Historic Executive Order securing an EXCLUSIVE 4 hour Broadcast window, so this National Event stands above Commercial Postseason Games. No other Game or Team can violate this Time Slot!!!”
You think he’s going to sit out a baseball lockout?
No one knows what the world will look like when the current labor deal runs out at the end of the year.
There could be a baseball franchise in Greenland by then. But the owners and players better plan to make room for another seat at the table.
• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.
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