{"id":826949,"date":"2026-07-27T12:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T12:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/826949\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T12:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T12:44:14","slug":"heres-an-idea-for-mlb-mlbpa-negotiate-the-next-labor-deal-at-the-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/826949\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s an idea for MLB, MLBPA: Negotiate the next labor deal at the Hall of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. \u2014 There they were, side by side, for just a moment, in the middle of the Hall of Fame\u2019s iconic plaque gallery. On the left stood the commissioner of baseball, Rob Manfred. On the right was the head of baseball\u2019s players union, Bruce Meyer.<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t there Saturday evening to solve the problems of baseball. They were simply there because this was the place where the baseball world gathered for a festive cocktail party on Hall of Fame induction weekend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And somehow \u2014 because this is how life on the cocktail party circuit works sometimes \u2014 their paths converged, maybe 30 yards from Babe Ruth\u2019s plaque and just around the corner from the goosebumpy Ted Williams sculpture.<\/p>\n

They shook hands, had a brief, seemingly amiable exchange, then went their separate ways. But as I watched them chat, it hit me.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019re looking for something, anything to offer hope that with the current collective bargaining agreement expiring in December,\u00a0the labor war<\/a> ahead won\u2019t shut down this sport for weeks or months at a time next year. Well, I think I just stumbled upon a brilliant idea:<\/p>\n

Just conduct every future negotiating session right there \u2014 in that spot.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take this labor show on the road, OK? No more dueling, impersonal press releases, emails and social media barrages. No more cold, tense meetings in the closest boardroom.<\/p>\n

You want to talk? You want to nudge this sport to the edge of the cliff? Fine. I dare you to do that talking and do that nudging in the plaque gallery of the Hall of Fame, with the legends of baseball looking over the shoulders of the negotiators who hold the fate of this sport in their hands.<\/p>\n

So on Sunday, I ran that brainstorm past Meyer, as we awaited the Induction Day ceremony at the Clark Sports Center. Let\u2019s just say he admired my effort to inspire this peace mission, but he wasn\u2019t quite ready to jump on board my little Save the Sport Express. Oh, well.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Bruce Meyer replaced Tony Clark as the executive director for the Major League Baseball Players Association in February. (Eugene Gologursky \/ Getty Images for The Players Alliance)<\/p>\n

A few feet away, though, I struck up a conversation with Gary Mintz, a Giants fan who had come to Cooperstown to cheer on the induction of Jeff Kent. Since he clearly loved baseball and this magical town that celebrates it, I decided to let Mintz in on my master plan to head off Labor Armageddon.<\/p>\n

What, I asked, would he think of the idea of holding every negotiation in that plaque gallery? Then, I said, both sides couldn\u2019t help but remember what was at stake. Was I right?<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely true,\u201d said Mintz, a native New Yorker who is also the president of the New York Giants Preservation Society. \u201cI\u2019ve been selected a few times to speak at the Cooperstown Symposium. They have a dinner in the plaque room, and it\u2019s just a place that you need to be. And if they were in there, with the history of the game all around them, maybe they\u2019d get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know what I feel about the power of baseball when I\u2019m in that room. So I wanted to know what Mintz feels. What is it about those plaques, hanging on those walls, that make you understand why baseball matters in so many lives, not just the lives of the folks at the bargaining table?<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the greatest players who ever played,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you forget about strikes. You forget about all the other hot stuff. You\u2019re just sitting in the midst of greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n The power of the plaque room is undeniable \u2014 to anyone who visits the Hall of Fame. (Jim McIsaac \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t have said that better. But it isn\u2019t just random baseball fans and hopelessly romantic baseball writers who feel these vibes. It\u2019s also the Hall of Famers themselves who feel them.<\/p>\n

Jeff Kent tried to express that feeling in his speech Sunday. When he walked into the Hall, as a Hall of Famer, he said, \u201cI finally realized the weight that this game carries.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to explain that weight was a challenge he wasn\u2019t sure he was up to.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, the halls are filled with stories that you can\u2019t experience anywhere else,\u201d Kent said. \u201cAnd to know that I get to be a part of that history, standing alongside the legends that I grew up watching \u2026 I still don\u2019t understand it. But overwhelming doesn\u2019t even begin to describe it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis day isn\u2019t about me, though. This day is about baseball. It\u2019s a celebration of baseball, and I just happen to be a part of it. Baseball was here long before me. It\u2019s going to be long after I sit back down. But standing up here with these guys sitting behind me, I\u2019ve never felt more humbled and more grateful in my entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n

His new Hall of Fame teammate, Andruw Jones, understood that feeling well. In January, he walked through that plaque gallery for the first time since being elected. He was there for a Hall of Fame press conference with the other new inductee, Carlos Beltr\u00e1n. But when that press conference ended, I couldn\u2019t help but notice what Jones did next.<\/p>\n

He began to stroll around the room, with the camera app open on his phone. He then stopped at the plaques of every one of his Hall of Fame Braves teammates and snapped a photo of their plaques. He was one of them now, and he wanted to soak in the connection \u2014 and the power of those plaques.<\/p>\n

It was just 10 minutes out of his day. But that memory, of watching him float around that room, has stuck with me for the past six months.<\/p>\n

So this weekend, I told him how special I thought that photo session was, and asked him about what inspired him to do it.<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 answer, in essence, was that these are more than just plaques. That gallery is where the careers of all these great players spring back to life, on demand. All it takes to bring them back is to simply stare at those plaques.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was here when I was young,\u201d Jones said, \u201cI did the same thing. Except I went around the room and took pictures of all the plaques of all the center fielders, because those were my heroes, and I wanted to be one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Andruw Jones takes photos of the Hall of Fame plaques in January. (Jayson Stark \/ The Athletic)<\/p>\n

A couple of hours later, I ran into longtime Twins catcher Joe Mauer, now two years removed from his own Hall of Fame induction weekend. I found myself telling him the story of Andruw Jones and his special reverence for the plaques in that room. Mauer shook his head. He knew exactly what I was talking about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did that, too,\u201d Mauer said. \u201cI took photos of my guys with the Twins.\u201d<\/p>\n

He began to recite the names: Kirby Puckett, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Dave Winfield, Jim Kaat. He had photos in his phone of their plaques, too. These weren\u2019t just plaques on a wall. They were history lessons that shaped the history of the only franchise he\u2019d ever played for.<\/p>\n

Before his own induction in 2024, Mauer said, he\u2019d visited the Hall twice \u2014 once for the 2004 Hall of Fame game, which he played in, then again in 2022 for the inductions of Oliva and Kaat. So he thought he\u2019d seen enough to understand the magic of this place \u2014 until his next visit let him know he didn\u2019t understand anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I got elected that January and flew in here that I really felt it,\u201d Mauer said. \u201cWe got in late at night. Then, first thing the next morning, they brought us in for our orientation. Adri\u00e1n Beltr\u00e9 and I were walking through that room (the plaque gallery). And all of a sudden, we just looked at each other. We never said a word, but I knew what that look meant.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a look that meant: Look around this room. What the heck are we doing in this room, hanging out with the legends?<\/p>\n

The plaque gallery. It\u2019s the Sistine Chapel of baseball.<\/p>\n

On Sunday morning, I struck up a conversation with Ted Simmons, who wasn\u2019t elected to the Hall until 32 years after he\u2019d played the final game of his career. I asked him what he feels when he looks at his plaque these days, five years after his own Induction Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, for me, it was such a long journey to get there,\u201d said Simmons, who was elected in 2020 but not inducted until September of 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cAnd to realize that is something that actually happened is really beyond my ability to describe.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Simmons, too, can\u2019t look at just his own plaque without taking a tour around the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen,\u201d he recounted, \u201cI go over and look at (Al) Kaline\u2019s plaque. And then I go over and look at (Mickey) Mantle\u2019s plaque. Then I go over and look at (Carl) Yastrzemski\u2019s plaque. And then I go back to mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

And once he finishes that circuit, to remind himself of the meaning of the great players who left an imprint on his own career, Simmons has one more plaque to celebrate. He was once an active, engaged member of the players\u2019 union in his day. So he is keenly aware that the most meaningful plaques in that room don\u2019t all belong to players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen,\u201d Simmons said, \u201cI look up at the plaque above mine and say how lucky I am to have come all this way and end up this close to Marvin Miller<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller, of course, was the driving force behind the rise of the players\u2019 union. And he was such a controversial figure within the sport that he wasn\u2019t elected to the Hall until 2020 \u2014 more than half a century after he went to work for the union.<\/p>\n

But his plaque is a reminder that if these two sides just follow my master plan, it won\u2019t be merely the baseball-playing icons who will be watching. The story of this sport is told inside that room \u2014 in so many ways, through the tales chiseled into those plaques and the portraits of the men who weaved those tales.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to spend five minutes in the plaque gallery and not feel their presence. So all I ask of the folks on both sides is to come back here, to this room, to this Hall, to this town \u2014 and never leave.<\/p>\n

Take these labor talks in whatever direction you\u2019d like. But when the legends are peering down upon you, ready to stare into your eyes any time you look up, you can feel what they\u2019re thinking:<\/p>\n

Fix this. Solve this. Don\u2019t break this. The one constant through all the years is baseball. And what we learned from another spectacular induction weekend in Cooperstown is, it\u2019s time to think of that beauty, that power and that chain of history \u2014 because that matters more than any of the dollar signs you\u2019re about to fight over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. \u2014 There they were, side by side, for just a moment, in the middle of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,3276],"class_list":["post-826949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}