@MarkKnudson41
Dick Monfort should have called me. I could have coached him up.
The owner of the Colorado Rockies, a man with an impressive business resume and a history of working successfully with unions from his days in the meat packing industry, was chosen by Major League Baseball to be a key negotiator in the labor dispute with the Player’s Union. He was made the Chairman of the Owner’s Labor Policy committee. You can understand why.
I was on the other side as a member of said Player’s Union many years ago. I sat in union meetings and became pretty well versed in the subject matter at the time.
Times have changed of course. Monfort wasn’t involved in MLB back in 1990…the Colorado Rockies didn’t even exist. That’s when I was a player rep for the Milwaukee Brewers. That season we’d had a very short work stoppage centering around free agency eligibility and arbitration. Spring training was delayed but we ended up playing a full 162-game season.
Things got worse four years later, after I’d retired. Baseball lost the last part of the season to a Player’s strike that resulted in the cancellation of the World Series and a delay to the start of the 1995 season. It was as ugly as these things can get.
But that was the last work stoppage until this one, 26 years later.
Even after a quarter century of labor peace, the core issue – how to equitably divide the revenues generated by professional baseball – remains the same. There’s a whole lot more involved now. It’s not only about arbitration eligibility and free agency, although those issue certainly remain. Now there are many more revenue streams and a lot more moving parts to keep track of. There are bigger dollar amounts. Much bigger dollar amounts.
Even though baseball salaries have actually gone down over the past half dozen years, the relationship between the Union and the Owners was actually a little worse back then. Five years earlier, the owners had colluded – they were found guilty in court – of working in concert to suppress salaries. As players we felt violated. There was zero trust between the two sides. Today there are more issues and more things to be resolved, but also a willingness to avoid public mudslinging and keep these negotiations out of the media for the most part, which is a good thing.
In 1990, there were legitimately MLB clubs in financial distress. The revenue streams weren’t close to what they are today…of course, neither were the salaries. Some small market teams were hurting a bit under the crunch of escalating high end salaries.
Fast forward to today. Zero MLB teams are hurting financially, including the Colorado Rockies. Every single team is making big money before they put a single butt in a single seat. It’s a good time to own a franchise. Yes, everyone suffered losses during the pandemic shortened season. Clubs reportedly lost $100 million. That was a big hit for a mid-market organization like the Rockies. But 2021 provided a return to financial normalcy for all. The Rockies hosted All-Star weekend, which provided a windfall for the organization and the surrounding region, estimated at around $190 million. The Rockies trimmed their payroll, and enter the 2022 season – whenever that starts – in solid financial footing.
With that as the backdrop, Monfort and his ownership bargaining group entered the first meeting with the players side in over a month and, according to reports, the Rockies owner made a costly verbal error. “People with knowledge of the meeting” said that Monfort “complained about the difficulty at least some owners have affording teams, and the ancillary costs of ownership such as security and COVID-19 measures.”
If that’s accurate, it was a really dumb thing to say. Crying poor at the outset of meetings designed to divide billions in revenue is a poor negotiating tactic. Having sat on the other side, I could have told Dick the kind of backlash that kind of statement would generate. At the very least, his stance created the kind of distrust that has been a hallmark of failed negotiations of the past. At worst, it could send reverberations through the players side and lead them to believe that the owners are going to try to paint themselves as victims of the greedy players, thereby sending the talks into reverse.
Dick Monfort is an astute businessman. As fans, it’s easy to complain about the on-field results that his organization produces most seasons. But you can’t argue with the fact that in every area except the on-field product, the Colorado Rockies are a very successful enterprise. And by most accounts, the Rockies treat their employees very well. That’s why its so hard to understand why Monfort would approach talks with the Player’s Union – who are in a way “his employees” to an extent – with a “poor us” attitude when it’s common and verifiable knowledge that that’s not the case.
If he would have asked me, I could have helped him avoid that unforced error. Let’s hope it doesn’t prove too costly.
Be sure to catch Mark Knudson and Manny Randhawa on the Park Adjusted Rockies Podcast each week, available on all major Podcast platforms.