Binary leadership is bad; MLB’s governance needs a trilogy

MLB’s structure needs a third, fan-based entity to smooth decision-making.

News Monday that MLB has made a new offer to the Players Association – and accompanying speculation that the Association is virtually certain to reject it out of hand—further underscores the structural problems that make an agreement between players and owners so difficult to achieve.

As reported by various media, this new proposal calls for a 76-game regular season that would end on Sept. 27 with a postseason finishing up at the end of October. The proposal envisions paying players 75 percent of their prorated salaries, playoff pool money, and no MLB draft pick compensation for signing players.

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MLB reportedly has given the union three days to respond. It’s being reported that union officials characterize the league’s latest offer as even worse than its previous proposals.

The fundamental problem baseball confronts is the binary nature of its negotiating structure. Absent from this structure is any internal, neutral authority capable of settling significant disputes between players and clubs and/or owners.

The game of baseball has two principal and major elements – the teams and the players – and they are governed separately. The teams answer to a commissioner – at the present, Rob Manfred – who they hire and fire.

The teams employ players on a contractual basis. But collectively the players are represented by the MLBPA, which is headed by Clark, an employee hired by the players.

That complete division of responsibility means that any time a dispute arrives between players – either individually or collectively – and owners, there is no naturally neutral body positioned to resolve the dispute. (The exception is for certain disciplinary cases, where a player’s basic contract empowers the commissioner to exercise mutually negotiated levels of discipline.)

The COVID-19 situation is unique and far different in its essentials from what might be termed ‘normal’ negotiating questions. Structurally, however, it still fits into that binary process that – especially when positions are fixed – can lead as easily to stalemate as progress.

There is a potential solution, namely a non-binary decision-making process.  It would necessitate players and club owners ceding part of their power by agreeing to creataion of a third entity to join Clark and Manfred at the top of the game’s power structure.

Ideally, this third party would be selected by the game’s fan base – possibly by a vote — and empowered to act in the best interests of either fans or the game generally or both.

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Under such a trilogy structure, disputes between any two of the entities could be kept in-house via submission to the game’s three joint leaders, the votes of any two prevailing to settle the issue. This would retain the opportunity for owners and players to exercise a binary veto when it was in their mutual interests to do so but would require some level of cooperation between those two groups to do so.

In the COVID-19 circumstance, for example, an empowered third party representing the interests of fans of the game – as opposed to the valid interests of the players and owners – would force conclusive action in one of two ways. It could side with one of the two existing sides’ proposals, and in so doing cause it to be implemented. Or it could force the players and owners to avert that first scenario by agreeing on a compromise solution.

There were feints in such a direction a century ago in the immediate aftermath of the Black Sox scandal. A Chicago advertising executive named Albert Lasker called for the creation of a three-person governing panel, one of the parties to be chosen by the fan base. Instead, club owners operated for a dictator-style arrangement. They gave Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis a lifetime contract, and Landis exercised control until his death in 1944.

When Landis died, however, the club owners did what have always done since then: they went looking for somebody they could control. When Marvin Miller empowered the players in the 1960s, he did precisely the same thing, making player-club relations even more overtly adversarial. That binary, confrontational process is the mode in which player-team relations have operated ever since.

As to who such a third party might be, the list of potential candidates is probably endless. Any of dozens of former players or executives would possess the necessary understanding of the game, and engender the requisite public trust,  to fill the role. So would experienced statesmen. Just to provide a feel for the type of person who might work, consider any of the following: Barack Obama, Ken Griffey Jr., George W. Bush, Nolan Ryan, Donna Shalala, Colin Powell, John Kerry, Robin Yount or Brian Sabean.

Implementation of a trilogy system today would certainly present problems, not least of which is that it would deny either owners or players the ‘veto’ option they currently hold in major decisions such as the resumption of play. In a trilogy system, they could be out-voted.

At the same time, it would have overwhelming benefits. First and foremost, it would absolutely ensure labor peace and stability for as long as the system was in effect. In doing that, it would ensure a second major advantage: restoring the concept of baseball as both a business and a sport.