Ep. 122: The Looming CBA Battle in Major League Baseball, with the Executive Director of the MLBPA, Bruce Meyer

And then a couple other questions about One is when we talk about caps, and this is, again, this is consistent with the college sports world now and many of the other pro sports leagues, but there's not a complete, despite what the leagues had argued in the past, there's not a complete unity of interest among the owners.

And how many owners do you think... would, if put under a truth serum, would say, we don't want a cap either.

You would think the big market teams that are trying to gain an advantage, some might not, but those who are spending more would be against a cap.

I know they wouldn't say that publicly as a league, but how many do you think are either neutral on it or opposed, or at least wouldn't want to miss games because of it?

I get asked this question a lot, and of course, I don't know.

I thought

this was the first time.

I don't know.

I wish I knew.

I wish I knew.

Yes, historically, you've heard that some teams are against it because, look, if you pay X dollars to buy a franchise in a certain city, and now you're being told there should be a system where you have to give up more of your income And it's going to limit some of your advantages.

I can understand, but I don't know the answer.

I know what I do know is a couple of things.

Number one, shutting down the season or part of the season for a sour cap makes no sense whatsoever economically for any of those owners, right? They are making money.

in all different ways.

We haven't talked about all the money around the ballparks, which is a growing source of revenue.

They're making money.

They're having record revenues and attendance and all that's just increasing.

And so To shut down games for any length of time makes no sense.

It's bad for the business.

They're going to have to go out and negotiate national TV contracts starting in, I don't know when the actual negotiation will start, but 27 probably, and to devalue the product.

which they've already done, by the way, by telling the whole world that the product is broken, fans don't have hope and whatnot.

So hopefully, my hope is that owners recognize that this makes no sense.

And once they realize, if they haven't realized already, that this is not getting traction with players, which it hasn't at all, that they'll say, okay, let's put our business hat on.

This doesn't make sense.