It takes Bryce Harper about four seconds to run from home plate to first base. It took him about the same amount of time to demolish the proposal the commissioner’s office made to the players’ union in an effort to ensure players participate in the Los Angeles Olympics: If you’re picked and you don’t play, you have to sit out two weeks when the season resumes after the Games.
“Obviously, you’re not going to suspend Bobby Witt Jr. from the Royals for two weeks,” Harper told me. “They’re not going to be able to win games without Bobby Witt. I don’t know if ownership would be on board with that.”
For three years, we’ve been talking about whether major leaguers would play in the Olympics. We’re less than two years from the Games now and, for all the platitudes from the league and the players’ union about growing the game internationally, each side is still bickering about whether the other side truly wants to take advantage of an event that the entire world will be watching.
“There’s no greater stage than the Olympics,” Harper said.
The league says play ball, but not without the authority to punish players that do not wish to play.
The union says play ball, but not unless the league eases up on mandatory participation, and unless LA28, the international baseball federation and the International Olympic Committee provides major league players with flexibility in areas such as accommodations, tickets and marketing rights.
When these issues surfaced publicly at the All-Star Game two months ago, the league said it was awaiting a counterproposal from the union. LA28 said the same thing. Two months later, MLB and LA28 are still waiting.
In March, on the eve of negotiations for a new labor agreement in which owners could shut down the sport for part or all of next season in trying to secure a salary cap, union chief Bruce Meyer said: “If we don’t have a season, we’re not going to play in the Olympics.”
That irritated league officials. Meyer said he meant that, if a lockout extended into 2028, the players would not play in the Olympics that year. He also said the union is not trying to use the Games as a bargaining chip in labor talks and said the two sides could reach an Olympics agreement independently of a collective bargaining agreement.
The union would prefer to strike a comprehensive deal with MLB and LA28. The NHL players reached a deal seven months before the start of this year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics. MLB announced its 2027 schedule eight months before the start of next season, assuming next season starts on time.
Allow me to say this: Your eyes are glazing over. That was far too many paragraphs without talking baseball. This is about growing baseball, remember. Harper was only too happy to share his memories of growing up and winning championships with Team USA in an 18-and-under tournament in Venezuela and a 16-and-under tournament in Mexico.
“I’ve never won a World Series,” Harper said. “But, at that age, there was nothing greater than putting USA across your chest and hearing your anthem blaring in a different country.
“Logistically, we’ve got to figure it all out.”
Harper said the owners need not be concerned about a wave of players wanting to skip the Olympics.
“I don’t think it’s going to be an issue,” he said. “I think you’re going to have a lot of players that want to do it, that want to play on a world stage.
“If I have a chance to do it, I’m going to do it, and I know a lot of guys would love to do the same thing.”
Shohei Ohtani has said he would. So has Kyle Schwarber. Even Tarik Skubal, who withdrew from this year’s World Baseball Classic after one three-inning appearance, said he is all in for the Olympics.
“Absolutely,” Skubal said.
Although his abbreviated WBC participation this spring was popularly tied to his free agency this fall, Skubal said the decision was simply based on a history of velocity that rises later in the season.
“Just looking out for my health,” he said. “I’m not ready to go sit 99 to 102 for five or six innings in March. There’s a different adrenaline that runs through you that I don’t think I’m ready for in March but I’m ready for come All-Star time.”
That’s in July, the same month as the Olympics. Skubal, like Harper, suggested the mandatory participation proposal would be unnecessary.
“Just try to make that make sense. It doesn’t,” he said. “I don’t get it. I think guys will have plenty of incentive to play, if they feel good and they’re up to it.
“Now, if they’re nursing some things and they feel they need the week off, they’re going to take the week off.”
Well, about that: In order to make sure that a player that skips the Olympics because of injury is truly hurt, the owners’ proposal would force him to sit out the first two weeks when the season resumes — even if the player is healthy by then.
“That’s stupid,” Skubal said.
I won’t go so far as to say the procedural issues holding up an Olympic agreement are stupid. The concerns are legitimate, but far from insurmountable, and they should not require two years to resolve.
Growing the game means fans from Rome to Caracas debating their dream teams in anticipation of the Games. And, in a nod to MLB, LA28 organizers scheduled the baseball competition in a preferred window, starting before any competition in gymnastics, swimming and track and field.
I will say that, since the crucial portions of collective bargaining negotiations likely won’t start in earnest until after the expected lockout starts in December, the next three months offer a window in which to get an Olympic deal done.
It would show that owners and players can work together for the good of the game, and it would promise fans an unprecedented, star-studded international tournament in 2028. It would represent a small and desperately needed ray of sunshine, before what could be baseball’s nuclear winter.
The post Why it’s past time for MLB players, owners to get a 2028 Olympics deal done appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
