The New York Times - USA (2020-07-26)

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSSUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020 N 31

As Major League Baseball’s commis-
sioner, Rob Manfred, boarded a private
jet in Phoenix in June, he was convinced
he had finally put his sport’s season on
track. He had just met with the head of
the players’ union, Tony Clark, and had
hashed out what he thought was a frame-
work to play an abbreviated season,
seemingly ending weeks of an ugly back-
and-forth between team owners and the
players.
Finally, Manfred thought, he could fo-
cus on transforming a sport steeped in
tradition into one played safely in the age
of social distancing.
But as Manfred’s plane passed over
Nebraska on its way to New York, he re-
ceived a message from Clark. The sides
did not, in fact, have a deal.
Aboard the jet, Manfred realized he
was staring down an existential threat
not only to baseball, but to his career as
well. Voices inside and outside the sport
were looking to M.L.B. to give the coun-
try some semblance of normalcy, to ease
the seemingly unending frustrations of
infections, lockdowns and a sprawling
pandemic.
Manfred knew that the chances of
holding a season would dwindle by the
day. He has risen through the sport on his
ability to create labor peace with the
players, but he knew the blame would
rest at his feet if he couldn’t resolve the
financial dispute between the athletes,
many of whom make millions per year,
and the owners, who are worth billions.
“We cannot be the one sport that does-
n’t figure out how to play,” Manfred
would tell himself repeatedly in the
weeks that followed, as he sat in his den
at home, working the phones with the
owners of the 30 teams and his deputies.
Manfred, who has an unusual ability to
vacillate between pugnacious and
charming, cajoled owners, stressing the
idea that the sport had to have a season.
Ideally, the owners would negotiate a
plan with the players’ union to hold a sea-
son, but Manfred knew he ultimately
needed only the owners’ approval to is-
sue a schedule.
As he tried to steer the players and
owners toward agreement in the weeks
that followed, he leaned into his willing-
ness to endure withering news media
coverage, and took a pummeling from
players and fans.
Two weeks later, he emerged with an
announcement that the sport would re-
turn to play. An abbreviated 60-game
season began on Thursday, making base-
ball the highest-profile North American
sport to begin in earnest since the pan-
demic struck.
“Well, we’re going to make it to the
starting line,” Manfred said on Thursday
from Nationals Park, the site of the sea-
son opener between Washington and the
Yankees. “Everybody seems excited,
like we have done something; all we
have done is get out of the gate — the
hard part is playing 60 games.”
As he sought to salvage the 2020 sea-
son, Manfred discussed his efforts in a
series of interviews with The New York
Times from May through July. What
emerged from those interviews was a
portrait of an executive confronting the
stress of trying to settle a labor dispute
and hold a season amid a confounding
global health crisis — nearly all of it from
his den at home. Manfred’s determina-
tion to return the sport to the field — and
his renewed engagement with his prede-
cessor and former boss, Bud Selig —
demonstrated how the sport’s 1994 strike
still haunts the game.

A science puzzle becomes

a labor issue

Even before the pandemic, Manfred
was facing possibly the toughest period
of his five-year tenure as commissioner.
Attendance had fallen for the fourth
straight season in 2019, and he was under
pressure to implement measures to
speed up the pace of games.
In January, he had released a report
detailing an illegal sign-stealing scheme
that the Houston Astros had used during
their championship season in 2017. Man-
fred punished the manager, general
manager and front office, but he did not
suspend any players, creating a back-
lash among rival teams and fans. Per-
haps his biggest misstep came when he
referred to the World Series trophy as “a
piece of metal” when explaining why he
declined to strip the Astros of their title.
For some team owners, the remark il-
lustrated the stark differences between
Manfred and his predecessor, Selig. No
owner could ever get through a conver-
sation with Selig without him referring to
baseball’s history. To some owners, Man-
fred, a career labor lawyer who suc-
ceeded Selig in 2015, needed to do more
to embrace the folksier and romantic as-
pects of his job.
But when the pandemic forced swaths
of the country to lock down and pro
sports leagues suspended operations, it
seemed like a problem that more suited
Manfred’s strengths. Before becoming
commissioner, he had been the sport’s
top official to deal with the gnarly prob-
lem of steroids, and this conundrum felt
similar, covering an unusual collision of
legal, labor, financial and health issues.
Right after the N.B.A. suspended its
season on March 11, Manfred shut down
the commissioner’s office in Midtown
Manhattan, and set up at his home office
in Florida. But even before he could try
finding a way to play the game safely, he
had to deal with the financial problems
the pandemic had created.
“There was an initial phase of sur-
vival, literally, of the business and that
mostly involved liquidity,” Manfred said.
Baseball, a $10 billion industry, took on

$2.5 billion worth of debt over a matter of

days, Manfred said. M.L.B. quickly made

a deal with the players’ union to lay out a

rough framework of pay for players and

other considerations for the 2020 season

— whenever it might be played.

He, his deputies, and allies in owner-

ship, including Yankees President

Randy Levine, then bore down to study

the health and science around the virus

and how it might affect their sport, but

hard answers proved elusive. Doctors

and scientists had different opinions

about basic issues, like whether the virus

could live on surfaces — an essential

question when talking about a sport

played with a ball.

But as he believed he was confronting

a science problem, a labor one arose. The

dispute centered on whether players

would receive their same pay per game

even if there were no fans in the stands,

which was becoming an increasingly

likely prospect. Owners felt players

should take additional pay cuts if there

was to be no ticket revenue, but the union

insisted on the initial deal they had

struck: getting paid their full prorated

salaries for every game played, whether

fans attended or not.

Amid public jousting with the players

and growing criticism of the owners,

Manfred flew to Arizona to meet with

Clark, the union head, in the hopes of

hammering out a deal.

Accounts of what happened in the

meeting differ. Manfred says that Clark

agreed to a framework for the season, in

which players would get their full pro-

rated salaries for a 60-game regular sea-

son and the playoffs would be expanded.

The union said no such agreement was

reached, and that the meeting contained

little more than a new pitch from the

commissioner.

The union’s unwillingness to make a

deal vexed Manfred as he flew back to

New York. He had made his name on

making deals with the players. Before

Manfred joined the commissioner’s of-

fice in 1998 as the top negotiator, the

sport had never signed a new collective

bargaining agreement without a work

stoppage. But in the two decades that fol-

lowed, with Manfred taking the lead, the

owners and the union had made four

deals without missing a single game.

Now, Manfred, in the most high-profile

moment of his life, appeared unable to

make a deal.

‘I remember what happened

to you’

Manfred, 62, said he felt a level of

stress this summer that he had never be-

fore felt. For one of the first times in his

life, he took up running, chasing after his

daughters, who were much faster than

him, as he tried to clear his head.

“There’s been like a couple of times

I’m thinking, Oh, this is what it feels like

to be really stressed,” he said. “Oh, I

mean, I have had a couple of those days.”

Manfred said he tried to put distance

between his sport’s fate and his own.

“The outcome of no games is a mas-

sive threat to the good of the game,” he

said. “The me part of it — you know what,

that’s the great part of this job: This is

the last job I’m going to have. I don’t

worry about that piece of it that much, I

really don’t.”

Manfred knew there was one person

who understood the perils of canceling a

season: Selig. Manfred had been Selig’s

top deputy until Selig retired as commis-

sioner after the 2014 season. They had

been very close, but had grown more dis-

tant as Manfred settled in as commis-

sioner. Selig wanted to avoid looking as if

he was still meddling; Manfred wanted

to chart his own course.

But in June the two began speaking

regularly again. Manfred said he looked

to his old boss for guidance.

“I’m the only other guy on the face of

the Earth who understands exactly what

the pressure is and what the situation is,”

Selig said.

During a phone call in June, Selig em-

phasized to Manfred that he had to nar-

row his focus to a singular idea: Finding

a way to play.

“If you just keep thinking about that

one phrase, you’re going to make really

good decisions,” Selig said he told him.

Manfred acknowledged to Selig that

there was one “sort of negative thought

in my mind that I’m trying to avoid.”

“What do you mean by that?” Selig

asked.

Manfred responded: “Look, I remem-

ber what happened to you in September

of 1994,” referring to when Selig canceled

that year’s World Series, the only time in

M.L.B. history it has not been played.

Selig recalled the anguish he had felt

after making that announcement. When

Selig returned home that day, he went

upstairs to his den, closed his eyes and

recreated every World Series he could

remember — starting with 1945 — in his

head, as he mourned the season.

“I just sat there very quietly in deep

thought, and I was heartsick,” he said. “It

was one of the low moments of my career

and in my life.”

Manfred was acutely aware that he

could face a similar fate.

“He got hung with this,” Manfred said

of Selig. “He canceled the World Series.

That’s so unfair. You know, I mean, it’s re-

ally completely unfair. But I think that

unfairness teaches you a lesson. And the

lesson is our fans don’t ever want us to

give up on the idea that we’re going to

play.”

A resolution brings a whole

new challenge

After Manfred and Clark met in June,

Manfred made another push for a deal.

The players didn’t budge; they said they

deserved their full prorated salaries and

began a social media campaign calling

for the season to begin and urging Man-

fred to “tell us when and where.”

But Manfred knew he still had a card to

play. As the commissioner, only he re-

tained the ability to restart the season.

That meant all he needed was the sup-

port of the owners.

From his den in June, Manfred had a

call with all of them. He could tell that a

majority of the owners still wanted to

play a season, and those who were afraid

of losing money and angry at the players

would hold back on protesting.

The Yankees’ president, Levine, said

Manfred’s bluntness helped him.

“He kept the clubs together by doing

something that many people cannot do,

especially when things are going bad: he

refused to sugarcoat anything,” Levine

said. “Some people would get embar-

rassed and don’t want to admit to what

the facts are on the ground but Rob was

self-effacing and very secure, which

gave him a lot of credibility and held ev-

eryone together.”

On June 22, the owners voted to imple-

ment a season, eschewing a negotiated

deal with the union. The regular season

would be 60 games with full prorated pay

for players, who retained an expanded

postseason as a bargaining chip for the

future. The league ended up expanding

the playoffs to 16 teams on Thursday.

But even with the players back on the

field, Manfred acknowledged that the

hardest part may be yet to come as the

coronavirus continues to ravage the

country. That point was underscored on

opening day, when the Nationals’ star

outfielder Juan Soto was held out of the

lineup because he received a positive vi-

rus test result that morning.

Manfred acknowledged in a phone in-

terview on Thursday that travel restric-

tions or an outbreak that threatened the

integrity of the sport's competition could

stop play. But for now, he believes the

league can move forward, especially be-

cause the percentage of players who

have tested positive is far lower than the

general population of Americans.

“That can change, we understand that,

and we know we have to be careful and

vigilant to deal with the possibility that it

is changing but right now, we feel like our

environment is pretty good, our proto-

cols are good,” Manfred said.

How the Commissioner Navigated a Summer of Peril for Baseball

Rob Manfred, above, began speaking regularly with Bud Selig, the former

commissioner, again in June. The two had been close but grew more distant

in the interest of maintaining Manfred’s independence. At left, a fan’s wishes

before the opener at Nationals Park on Thursday would go unfulfilled.

DAVID J. PHILLIP/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

All Dodgers fans were in the stands in spirit for their home opener, and some were even there in two dimensions.

HARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGES

Rob Manfred’s determination to

salvage the season shows how the

1994 strike still haunts the game.

‘We cannot be the one sport that doesn’t figure out how to play.’

ROB MANFRED, sharing the mantra that motivated him

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT