Dick Monfort may be the head of MLB’s labor committee, but if you’re looking for the actual most powerful owner in the game, he’s the guy sitting beside Monfort this week in CBA talks — Hal Steinbrenner. The Yankees’ managing partner has kept most of his thoughts on the lockout to himself, but his relative position within the consortium of MLB gives him more sway over how this thing ends than almost anyone else on the ownership side.
Technically, each of the 30 owners in the game has a single nontransferrable vote, meaning they all technically have the same say, but if you’ve ever sat on a collective or committee, you know that actual consensus tends to be directed by one or two particularly powerful individuals, and if they choose to, they can move the rest of the committee toward their intended outcome.