Union head predicts lockout
MLBPA preparing for no baseball
Good morning, all! Happy Monday!
Enjoy your baseball: be it spring training, the WBC or the 2026 season. Repeat! Enjoy your baseball, because there is a good chance a year from now, at this time, there will be no baseball. No MLB, anyway.
The interim director of the MLBPA is predicting the owners will lockout the players, when their contract with ownership expires on Dec. 1. Bruce Meyer is predicting there will be lockout because the owners will insist on a salary cap and the union will oppose it, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west - at least in this hemisphere.
After a meeting with the Detroit Tigers, Meyer was quoted by Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press: “The league has pretty much already said there’s going to be a lockout. I think the commissioner more or less guaranteed it. I would be shocked if they didn’t do a lockout when the agreement expires.”
Meyer promises the union will negotiate in “good faith,” when talks get underway after Opening Day, but if the owners insist on a salary cap, it is a non-starter. Period! Fini! So to repeat. Enjoy your MLB in 2026. It might be a long time, before we have it again.
Joe and Marilyn
Okay. I admit it. I am a sap for the Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1960s. I have always been intrigued by Marilyn Monroe. Who isn’t? And I have always been enamored with the relationship between Monroe and baseball icon Joe DiMaggio, a stormy relationship and a love story that existed after their divorce and was about to undertake another renewal, when she was found dead of an overdose in her home on Aug. 5, 1962.
June 1 will mark the 100th anniversary of Monroe’s (Norma Jean’s) birth. Over the weekend I read The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, by James Patterson and Imogen Edwards Jones. The book, published on Dec. 1, 2025, is written in the present tense and puts you right in the middle of the action. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
A couple of other Monday thoughts:
Kudos to Nico Echavarria for winning the Cognizant Classic on Sunday. Shane Lowry collapsed over the last three holes, blowing a three-stroke lead and Echavarria, a native of Columbia hung in there, winning the tournament just days after he and his family closed on a house in Florida. Timing is everything.
83-year-old Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says he is prepared to break the bank to bring in players that will give “America’s Team” its first Super Bowl title in 30 years. For the second straight season, the Cowboys failed to make the playoffs, and when you think about it, never has a professional sports team received so much adoration and coverage over the last three decades, without winning it all. In the NFL, where there is a salary cap, 2026 could be an interesting one made even more intriguing, if Jones opens his wallet.
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. Thank you for being a subscriber and enjoy your Monday!
DAN