Today, Major League Baseball announced a fun to support ballpark workers who’ve been impacted by the lockout.
Specific ballpark workers:
MLB announces fund to help spring-training workers… pic.twitter.com/pJ6IDKz4ZA
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 8, 2022
I share this for a few reasons. For one, it’s just a good and appropriate thing to do to help people out when your own lockout has messed up their lives. For another, it’s directly responsive to both the MLBPA’s similar offer AND the recent acknowledgement that the pain felt by the Spring Training cities is going to be severe.
For a third reason – I can’t NOT comment on it – the fund is applicable only to Spring Training workers affected by cancelled games. The statement indicates that a fund for people impacted by the loss of regular season games would come in the future. In other words, even though MLB has cancelled the first two series of the season, they aren’t fully committing to the plans for that fund. Logistics to sort out? Cheapness? … Or holding out hope that no games will wind up entirely off the schedule? I mean, MLB is offering that if a deal is done today on the CBA, then they will reschedule the games that have been cancelled. So maybe they really are holding out hope.
Assuming that doesn’t happen, however, then it’s good to know that MLB is already preparing to take care of stadium workers who are going to be hurt by the lost games.