Major League Baseball just announced that all 30 teams in baseball have agreed to pledge $1,000,000 (per team) to help cover the last wages of ballpark employees who are now out of that work with the postponement of the regular season. From ESPN’s Jeff Passan:
Motivated by desire to help some of the most valuable members of the baseball community, each club has committed $1 million,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement given to ESPN.
“The individual clubs will be announcing more details surrounding this support effort in their local communities. The timing of these announcements will vary because of the need to coordinate with state and local laws as well as collective-bargaining obligations in an effort to maximize the benefits realized by each group of employees. I am proud that our clubs came together so quickly and uniformly to support these individuals who provide so much to the game we love.
There are a lot of details that we don’t know yet. Some that immediately came into my head, and once that I do not have any answers for at this moment in time:
- Who counts as a ballpark employee? Does everyone who works at the ballpark in a non-baseball capacity qualify here? Are any of the workers/vendors hired by third parties/contracted? Do they qualify for this?
- How many people fall into this category? $1,000,000 goes a lot further if the number is 250 people instead of 1,000 people.
I also feel the need to be sure that I’m noting here that I am not complaining about the teams stepping up to help out. But I also don’t have answers at all to the question of how much this is going to help, or how many people it will apply to. Those are important questions. The answer will probably vary by team, too, as they likely have different numbers of people that work there.
Doug, glad to hear of them doing this. Thanks for the post.
On a separate note, if you have access to the players, I’d like to hear about hobbies of the players. Who talks about fishing all the time? Who does charitable work? Who has a room in his house dedicated to LEGOs? Yeah, baseball news has come to this.
I honestly love the gesture the teams are making to their workers but is it enough. I have heard that people are now worried this will last the rest of this year. I know that is premature to say that officially but my own personal belief is that it could be true.
Lets all hope not and hope we start getting some good news. Life on our planet is not too good more most people.
Good for the Reds, and all the teams. Whether it’s “enough” or not, it’s a very good start. I won’t be surprised if there is more of this to come from the teams as the economic situation for stadium and team employees, minor leaguers and everyone who relies on the Reds for their income becomes clearer, along with the duration of this interruption. And I won’t be surprised if some of the well paid veteran players join forces to lend a helping hand as well. We’ll get through this together far better than we could each in or own.