2 Vintage Sports Guys - Episode 22

Join Joe and Paul for a special episode focused on the pending MLB strike. Will the Players win or will the Empire Strike Back?? Stay tuned! 

Watch the video at BZZR!:

https://bzzr.com/creator-studio/content?tab=videos&watch=true&videoId=J4ue6pK8q9Wpfjb1ed2a

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to Two Vintage Sports Guys. Paul and I pre-recorded a little chat about the MLB pending strike and what our feelings were. Let's take a listen. Where do you stand on are you a player or an owner? Owner. What this strike.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Always been an owner.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Always. I never took the player's side.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yeah, I think I think you need a floor and you need a cap, and you need to do what everybody else does. But the floor, the and but what the players don't understand is you're going to take, and there's an excellent Instagram video I can send to you later. You can take the top eight teams and the amount of money they're going to have to cut, but then you're stacking it on the bottom 10 teams. So the players are still going to get paid. Careers will actually be lengthened because the Marlins are going to have to pay older guys to come and play. So the players, I think, don't have a leg to stand on going against this idea of a cap and a floor because it's actually going to extend them. And the rookie salaries just got doubled. So the problem is you're going to have guys, and I'm going to talk bad about them, but Bryce Harper is out in left field for this. He's already hammering the commissioner, hammering the plan. Because yeah, he's a beneficiary of having an 82-year contract. He's going to be paid until I'm an old man. But the young guys get their salary doubled. Careers are going to be extended because the bottom 10 teams are going to have to spend a lot more. So everybody gets to win. And I think the revenue sharing and everything is done. I think the proposal looks very fair. And to actually think that there's 10 teams out there that said, okay, we'll cut and we're we'll we'll stop spending. Yes, it's beneficial for them, but they're also taking a bigger risk. The Dodgers automatically make the playoffs every year because they're spending 400 million. And because of that, they're making a ton of money, but they're actually giving a lot away under this proposal. And the media is all going to be lumped into one area and all the revenue sharing from the media contracts, so the big markets giving to the small markets. It seems to me to be a fair proposal. And it seems to me the the players are just led by their union boss and a couple of big name players, and where do the young people get their voice whose salaries are going to double from 850 to a million point five?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

So do you think these teams that traditionally don't spend money, like the Marlins, Pirates, et cetera, should those owners have the right in a capitalistic US to do exactly what they want with that team, including not spend money and running into the ground and lose parentally? Or should this be considered more entertainment and more parity, and they should be forced to this floor and ceiling?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Well, they they should be forced because they already have a congressional exclusion from a monopoly. So, in assessments they're a monopoly. And they should have been broken up long ago, but Congress has given them a break. And so if they're going to be a private club, which essentially is what they are, then they should be allowed to put their own rules in place and force those owners to spend more money. Yes. I think they've already been given that exclusion from the regular normal course of action from a government non-interference point to actually making them police themselves, and those owners should be drummed out and they should be forced to spend more money.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

But they we've tried this before, right? This goes back to the days of Marvin Miller and the 94 World Series that didn't happen because of that player strike and owner's lockout. And now the owners have, in their own words, built up a $700 million war chest to sit out for two or three years.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Don't say that. Wow. No, that would be horrible. Because I think everybody recognized that it hit that that every time baseball's going on strike, they've they took a hit. And let's face it, other sports now are much more popular than baseball. Football's unbelievable, basketball's unbelievable, hockey's up and coming. So it's not like it was in the strikes prior or the lockouts prior, where baseball was far and away the biggest sport. Now there's a lot more competition. So I credit the owners for getting this proposal out the door early. It's June, and we're talking about it already. The contract ends December 1st, plenty of time before spring training.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

So I'd like to think they'll feel players opposed to if they don't like a cap, obviously, on the high end, but why doesn't it wash with raising the floor?

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Because they don't think. Honestly, because they don't think. And I think all they hear is a cap, a cap, a cap. And you've got one union boss. I don't even know who it is. Back in our day, it was, what was it? Fur wasn't his last name, F-E-H-R. You know, like so you have one union boss, Donald Fur. Yeah. You have one union boss out there saying, Oh, it's bad. Cap, no cap, no cap, no cap. And they're not actually thinking, in my mind, the benefits of longer careers, higher minimum salaries, what it does for the longevity of the sport, what parody does. I think that's one thing that could be argued, and maybe we argue it on football in the next show is football gets gets gets made fun of for having parity, meaning all the teams are alike, and and what does that do? So that's probably the next conversation to have is what does is parody good or bad for the sport? And yeah, I would argue it's good.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah, yeah. Because at the end of the day, does a player care about the league having parody? Or does he care about his big contract on a good team so they can beat everybody and he gets his ring? Like, do they you think a 22-year-old cares about the bigger pitcher of the league versus his contract on hopefully a great team?

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Well, no, you're you're right. So the the problem, I think, is that you have two camps the young players who will get their salaries doubled and not have a voice, and the old players like the Bryce Harpers, who who consistently make fun of the commissioner and speak out against the commissioner, because he's already got his 13-year contract. So he said he's gonna protect that um mentality of get the most that you possibly can. And then you've got a middle group of players who are coming up that will be going for their next quote-unquote big huge contract. They're gonna want that big, huge contract, a 10, 12-year one. I think those contracts are horrible. I don't think they're good for anybody to give them away, and they have the biggest voices. So we'll have it'll be very interesting to see if what I look at is common sense, which establishes a floor and a cap. The establishment of a floor is a really big deal. I don't think anybody would have called that a couple of years ago. And the fact that the owners now say, to your point earlier, we're gonna police ourselves and get these crappy owners to actually spend money, well, now we're gonna have something good to work with.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

So do you think, and I keep saying we'll end on this, and then I ask another question. Do you think the owners and commissioner like what is happening in the central in the National League with parody and all that, or would they rather have a team or two running away with the division and the bad ones just stinking as usual because everybody's used to that?

SPEAKER_00 8:40

No, I think they like they they like parody. I think parody brings everybody to the ballpark. And if everybody's got a chance to win, and you're not out of it on June 2nd, like I'm looking at the Rockies, 24 and 40, even the Giants are, you know, 15 games back. It's June 2nd. If your season's over by June, the Angels, 24 and 40. I mean they they're they're gonna like the parody, I think is the answer, quick answer to your question. And parody is good for everybody in attendance and fans. Everybody wants to be rooting for games in August and then July. And that's all that's what parody does, is any given Sunday, you know, kind of thing. In this case, every given day.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Oh, you said every given Sunday, and I saw Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx from that movie. All right, let's see.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

I mean, look at the positive, Joe. There's Cameron Diaz. Horrible football movie.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

I hate that movie. All right. We all good. We covered the bases, and uh that's that. Say goodbye, Paul. Goodbye, Paul. All right, guys, take it easy, talk to you soon.