TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D3
to find middle ground on several
issues before forging a deal, fore-
most among them the collective
bargaining tax threshold — the
number at which a team’s collec-
tive salary commitments are high
enough to require it to start pay-
ing a tax if they spend more. MLB
has proposed a threshold that
begins at $214 million in 2022.
The players have proposed a 2022
number of $245 million.
If that $31 million gap isn’t
enough, the sides disagree even
more heartily on what the penal-
ties for going over the threshold
should be. MLB has proposed a
massive hike in those tax rates
from where they were in the
previous CBA. The players want
to maintain the lesser rates from
that deal, arguing that what the
owners are proposing would cre-
ate a de facto salary cap — some-
thing the union has been proud to
avoid for generations.
But as contentious as negotia-
tions over that number have been
and will be, there are plenty of
other issues under discussion.
Getting a deal done in time to
preserve the scheduled Opening
Day would require a comeback of
sorts — the kind that would keep
both sides talking late into the
night because something had
changed. How much the proba-
bility had increased by Monday
night was unclear. All that was
clear was that they were still
talking and had no immediate
plans to stop.grew so frustrated with the own-
ers’ side that they considered
walking away entirely.
And even as late as Monday
evening, both sides indicated that
the owners and players still hadkind of frustrated, angsty conver-
sation that has dominated the
sport for months.
As recently as Saturday, repre-
sentatives from the Major League
Baseball Players Associationleverage from the owners.
But the goal is to avoid more
weeks of talking about leverage
and lockouts, of good days and
bad days, of incremental progress
and how much work is left — theratified, chaos will ensue.
Free agency and offseason
transactions halted when the
lockout began, meaning hun-
dreds of free agents — including
stars such as Carlos Correa and
Freddie Freeman — have yet to
find homes. Executives have not
had time to make the trades they
would like to make. The Rule 5
draft, postponed by the lockout,
would need to be scheduled. Play-
ers who live outside the United
States and are not on a major
league roster will have to deal
with getting visas set up, a proc-
ess that delays a few players
annually under the best of cir-
cumstances — and is likely to
hold up far more of them in a rush
like the one that would follow a
deal.
But no one seems too con-
cerned about navigating the flur-
ry of activity that would follow
the ratification of a new collective
bargaining agreement. The hard
part is getting one agreed to in the
first place.
Manfred has said that missing
games would be a “disastrous
outcome” for the sport, even
though his owners initiated the
lockout and then waited six
weeks to begin negotiating. They
could lift the lockout at any time,
but nothing in the history of
baseball labor negotiations sug-
gests that would be under consid-
eration. Lifting the lockout would
give the players the ability to
strike, which would take someare withheld, the players would
try to negotiate the calendar and
their pay, rather than simply
agree to whatever MLB decides.
In other words, even if MLB post-
pones Opening Day, the union
was holding out hope that the
schedule could be restored down
the road.
But as of late Monday, the
question was not so much wheth-
er Opening Day would be post-
poned but rather whether a deal
might somehow get done in time
to save it — even if it doesn’t get
done until Tuesday or Wednes-
day.
Opening Day is set for March
- Once an agreement is reached,
the sides expect to need a few
days to ratify the pact before
spring training camps can open.
Exactly how much spring train-
ing will be needed is a point of
contention, but MLB set the Mon-
day deadline because it believes
that’s the last day a deal can be in
place and allow for four weeks of
spring training before Opening
Day.
The players have long argued
that spring training, normally six
weeks, is too long and that they
could get by on a more condensed
schedule. And people familiar
with the union’s thinking suggest
that after those few days needed
to ratify an agreement, they
wouldn’t need a full four weeks.
Either way, once an agreement is
MLB FROM D1
Baseball labor talks go deep into the night in hopes of salvaging Opening Day
GREG LOVETT/PALM BEACH POST/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Players union chief Tony Clark, left, and Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, center, were at the talks Monday.Russian opponent, Anastasia Po-
tapova, in a match scheduled for
Tuesday at the Monterrey Open,
as well as any other opponent
from Russia or Belarus. Svitolina,
27, was joined in her appeal by the
54th-ranked Kostyuk, a 19-year-
old Kyiv native who called on the
WTA to pull all events from
Russia and condemn the govern-
ment’s actions.
The ban of the men’s national
soccer team, though, is the big-
gest immediate blow to Russian
sports. When the 2018 World Cup
was staged in Russia, the squad
defied the odds by advancing to
the quarterfinals before losing to
Croatia in a penalty kick shoot-
out. It is ranked No. 35 in the
world by FIFA, up from No. 70
before the 2018 tournament. The
women’s team, ranked No. 25, has
not qualified for the World Cup
since 2003 and has never ad-
vanced out of the European
Championship’s group stage.
This is not the first time FIFA
has taken action against a men’s
national team on political
grounds. Before the 1994 World
Cup, the governing body sus-
pended Yugoslavia from World
Cup qualifiers after the United
Nations sanctioned the country
over the Bosnian war.
The U.S. Soccer Federation de-
nounced the invasion, saying it
wouldn’t “tarnish our global
game” by taking the same field as
Russia until there was peace in
Ukraine. (The U.S. men’s and
women’s teams do not have any
matches scheduled against Rus-
sian opponents.)
On the club level, Manchester
United terminated its sponsor-
ship deal with Aeroflot, Russia’s
national airline, and German
club S chalke canceled its partner-
ship with Gazprom, its main
sponsor, by removing the compa-
ny’s logo from its jerseys.Liz Clarke contributed to this report.with business partners in Russia
and pausing its Russian language
social and digital media websites.
The league said it will discontin-
ue any consideration of Russia as
a location for any future games.
The International Ice Hockey
Federation s uspended all Russian
and Belarusian national and club
teams at all age levels from offi-
cial competitions until further
notice and withdrew the hosting
rights of the 2023 world junior
championships from Russia.
The World Curling Federation
said it was beginning the process
of removing Russians from the
upcoming world tournaments.
Ukrainian tennis pros Elina
Svitolina and Marta Kostyuk
turned to social media Monday to
plead with tennis authorities to
take action. As of late Monday,
neither the Women’s Tennis Asso-
ciation nor the Association of
Tennis Professionals had issued a
statement about any changes to
events scheduled in Russia or the
presentation of Russia’s flags and
athletes.
On Saturday, the International
Tennis Federation, which stages
entry-level tournaments for ris-
ing pros, announced it was post-
poning a men’s event scheduled
for April in Ukraine because of
“heightened safety concerns” and
suspending all 2022 tournaments
scheduled in Russia and Belarus.
In a n appeal posted Monday on
Twitter, the 15th-ranked Svitolina
wrote: “I believe the current situ-
ation requires a clear position
from our organisations: ATP,
WTA and ITF. As such, we —
Ukrainian players — requested to
ATP, WTA and ITF to follow the
recommendations of the IOC to
accept Russian or Belarusian na-
tionals only as neutral athletes,
without displaying any national
symbols, colours, flags or an-
thems.”
Failing that, Svitolina added,
she would refuse to play herthe country’s governing body,
said in a statement: “This deci-
sion is contrary to the norms and
principles of international com-
petition, as well as the spirit of
sports.... Such actions are divid-
ing the world sports community,
which has always adhered to the
principles of equality, mutual re-
spect and independence from
politics. We reserve the right to
challenge the decision of FIFA
and UEFA in accordance with
international sports law.”
The move by FIFA and UEFA
comes one day after FIFA an-
nounced initial measures to pe-
nalize Russia, including a ban on
Russia using its name, flag and
anthem. Home games were to be
played at neutral sites without
fans.
The teams would have had to
compete under the name “Foot-
ball Union of Russia,” similar to
how the country’s athletes com-
peted in the Tokyo and Beijing
Games as the “Russian Olympic
Committee” as punishment for a
state-sanctioned doping pro-
gram.
This decision by FIFA and
UEFA aligns with the Interna-
tional Olympic Committee’s rec-
ommendation Monday that fed-
erations and organizations
should not allow or invite Rus-
sian or Belarusian athletes or
officials to participate in events.
Belarus has been a staging
ground for the Russian offensive
and reportedly is sending troops
to Ukraine in support of Russian
forces.
In a statement, the IOC said it
was moving “to protect the integ-
rity of global sports competitions
and for the safety of all the
participants.” The IOC stopped
short of an outright ban and has
not suspended either country.
Also, the NHL announced it
was suspending its relationships
SOCCER FROM D1
FIFA, UEFA suspend Russian teams
KAI PFAFFENBACH/REUTERSMessages were sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a match Saturday in Frankfurt, Germany.
arts to its ballet-based
athleticism, with his emphasis
on brute strength. Look again at
those absurd videos of Putin
practicing judo — the aging,
chill-faced little man taking an
ungainly roll. See how heavily he
breathes and how he unstably
struggles to rise. Understand
how much sports exhibitions
matter to Putin — as long as no
one looks too closely.
Declarations such as FIFA’s
will penetrate his total control
of the media and cause Russians
to look more closely at him.
There is no propagandizing this
playing field ostracism, no
explaining away the sports
world’s recoil from him. “Most
ordinary Russians have a very
limited and distorted picture of
what’s happening in Ukraine,”
Kasparov says. “But things like
FIFA banning Russia will make
them look around.” Banking
sanctions are one kind of check,
but there is deep emotion in a
ban from the world’s largest
arenas that will reach not just
oligarchs but ordinary people as
a statement of universally
revolted sensibilities. It takes a
special rage to refuse to play
with someone at all.
“Sport organizations are
absolutely important as a form
of isolation,” Kasparov says, “to
show Putin and the people who
support him that there are
consequences for his actions,
that he cannot define the
battlefield.”colossally scaled buildings that
promised massive rebuilt
infrastructure in a “new” Russia,
with facades that dwarfed
individuals into specks and
projected the fearsome power of
a literal rainmaker.
Sochi wasn’t just a vanity
project or an excuse to build
palaces for Putin. You can thank
the IOC for boosting Putin’s
flagging domestic approval
ratings, which apparently went
from 54 percent in 2013 to an
all-time high near 90 percent
after the Olympics and bolstered
his Ukraine strategy.
Russia analyst David Satter —
the author of the book “The Less
You Know, The Better You Sleep”
about Putin’s rise and who
examined his regime closely for
years before he was expelled —
believes all of Putin’s wars are
strategic attempts to placate
Russians for his kleptocracy by
“consolidating the population
around various military
adventures.”
Barring Russian teams from
sports arenas will break through
and speak to the Russian
population in a uniquely
powerful if regrettable way. It
leaves Putin uncovered, reminds
Russians of his genuine
unsavoriness in the eyes of the
world. The most angering thing
about strongmen is that they
blot out culture and replace it
with personal cult, and Putin
has blotted his country’s
glorious culture, from its finefirst place, as Kasparov observes.
It stemmed from a fundamental
misconception: that this odious
strongman trifled with events
such as the World Cup and the
Olympics because he wished to
play nice with the international
audience and had a diplomatic
side. Wrong.
Putin’s games always have
been about his dead-serious,
murderous consolidation of
power at home. They are tools to
awe and blinker, to intimidate
and cow, with displays of
superiority. FIFA’s decision to
suspend Russia from World Cup
play and all other soccer
competition for the bloody
invasion of Ukraine is thus
merely remedial, and now it’s
the International Olympic
Committee’s turn to make up for
the unpardonable 2014 Sochi
Games, which so encouraged his
flexing and strengthened him.
It’s an open question whether
Putin is truly after the
restoration of a triumphalist,
imperialistic Russian identity in
Ukraine, or whether he needs
another bloodstained
nationalistic surge to cover for
the criminality of his regime, or
whether he just has come
egotistically unmoored. In any
case, sports matter greatly to the
narrative he’s trying to push. If
he’s hellbent on reversing what
he saw as the humiliations of
the 1990 s by decadent
Westerners, then gold medals
give him credibility. Or if he’s
simply out to shore up his
“mystique” in the face of rising
discontent at home and to
“inoculate Russians against
revelations about his
malfeasance” by whipping up
Russian competitiveness against
meddling outsiders, as political
scientist M. Steven Fish
powerfully suggested in 2014,
then trophy hunting is a fine
way to do that, too.
Kasparov, for one, believes
Putin’s power plays through
sports engagement have been
more essential to him than most
analysts have recognized. When
one of his confidants, Roman
Abramovich, bought into in the
English Premier League via
Chelsea, it made the stunted
Russian economy seem more
global-sized. Sports for Putin
have long offered cover “for
some operations that are not
directly related to the games,”
Kasparov observes. They are “an
important part in his campaign
of gaining influence.”
There was no better instance
than the Sochi Games, Putin’s
personal enterprise, withJENKINS FROM D1SALLY JENKINSTaking sports from Putin exposes himYURI KADOBNOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Vladimir Putin has long trifled with events such as the World Cup
to aid his dead-serious, murderous consolidation of power at home.Take The Post for a run
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