The little people are collateral damage.
The groundwork is being laid for the Major League Baseball owners’ lockout of the Major League Baseball Players Association in December. David Rubenstein’s Baltimore Orioles business has fired a number of its non on the field staff along with two of the people who play the business’s mascots, Oriole Bird and Mr. Splash, during home games. If there is a lockout or even if there isn’t a lockout, the two actors playing the mascots can be replaced. The other people let go by the Orioles franchise can also be replaced but the people let go are not or were not making much money compared to the players. The little people will pay the price in the high stakes negotiations between owners and players as they try to figure out how to split billions of dollars. The front office employees along with the per diem employees are caught in the crossfire and neither the owners nor the players care about their day to day living in their money squabble.
In January, 2025, Rubenstein who is the CEO and principal owner of the Orioles franchise showed his hand. “I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do, and maybe eventually we will, but we don’t have that now,” Rubenstein told Yahoo Finance during the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. “I suspect we’ll probably have something closer to what the NFL and the NBA have, but there’s no guarantee of that.” In 2025, the owner of MLB’s most lucrative franchise, the New York Yankees, was pushing for a salary cap. Hal Steinbrenner said he might support a salary cap proposal as long as it contains a provision mandating minimum payrolls. The storm clouds are building as the end of MLB’s collective bargaining agreement is near.Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
https://evanweiner1.substack.com
