“Carl Mays”

Feb. 28, 2021

If you’re a baseball fan, you probably know that Major League Baseball is in the midst of a lockout. Spring training has already been postponed, Opening Day is in serious doubt, and the two sides — the owners and the players association — are said to be more polarized than they’ve been in decades.

In fact, if the players and owners don’t reach an agreement by the end of the day today, then Opening Day will officially be postponed.

“The players are more united, I think, than they have been since the 1994 strike,” said ESPN’s Jeff Passan today. “They’re united, they’re angry, and they feel like the offers that the league are putting on the table right now simply aren’t good enough — and frankly, if you look at the financials of the situation, they’re not. So, the players are emboldened at this point, they’re willing to lose games, and the owners are simply going to ride them out as long as they can and see if they can break them.”

Don’t be fooled by the relatively large salaries of Major League Baseball players.

This is a conflict between a skilled labor force and a small group of super-rich fat cats trying to continue raking in money on the backs of their workers.

Baseball has 30 ownership groups whose primary interest is profit, and a commissioner in Rob Manfred whose primary interest is pandering to the interests of those 30 ownership groups.

The players, on the other hand, have dedicated their lives to becoming excellent baseball players with no guarantee that it would ever pay off. Almost all of them have a deep love and passion for the game itself, one that took hold long before finances became a consideration. Many of them remember toiling for years as minor leaguers, often not earning a living wage. All of them have experienced their rich ownership group exerting control over their own life, their own career, their own hard-won talent.

And so the players are looking out for themselves and their own interests, yes, but they are also fighting for the soul and future of the game of baseball. And they are fighting against the owners over this — over the integrity and continuity of a game that has given and meant so much to so many of us.

Of course, as always happens, the super-rich fat cats are able to exert more influence over the mainstream media narrative than the workers, so this has been painted as a situation of two sides failing to reach an agreement. In this case, MLB.com is actually controlled by the league, with the league employing the writers and journalists and exerting control over what exactly is covered.

It is long past time for a player-owned league. Just as musicians don’t need Spotify shareholders earning the majority of profits from their music, and just as none of us needs bank shareholders profiting off our personal finances, baseball players don’t need a handful of super-rich owners earning the majority of profits from their on-field talents.

But that’s another conversation entirely. For now, just remember that the players are the good guys, the owners and the commissioner are the bad guys, and that it really is that simple.

Last August, I released a song called “Carl Mays” that I never told you about. Carl Mays pitched 15 seasons starting in 1919, winning more than 200 games along the way. He began his career with the Red Sox and was traded to the Yankees midway through the 1919 season. In his first two full season with New York, Mays proceeded to win a combined 53 games — 26 in 1920 and 27 in 1921.

But those accomplishments are largely forgotten — overshadowed by a tragic moment on Aug. 16, 1920, when Mays hit Cleveland’s Ray Chapman in the head with a pitch.

These being the days before players wore helmets, Chapman was completely unprotected. The sound the ball made against his head was said to echo sickeningly throughout the stadium, and after staggering to the ground, Chapman was taken to a hospital, where he died that evening. He remains the only big league baseball player to die as a result of an on-field injury.

Mays, on the other hand, not only continued to pitch after the injury, he continued to pitch in that very game. He made his next start. He finished his lengthy career.

The defining tragedy of his life was inextricably intertwined with his defining accomplishments.

How do you pick up that ball and throw another pitch after something like that?

I don’t know, but this song explores that question.