When Mom and Dad can’t stop fighting, it’s the kids who suffer. In the ongoing battle between Major League Baseball and the Players Association, the kids are all the normal people who work in and around the sport.
In two weeks, a typical organization will dispatch to Arizona or Florida some 75 people making closer to the salary of Mike Trout’s barber than to that of Mike Trout. All of these people—athletic trainers, clubhouse attendants, media-relations staffers among them—have been strung along for three months, unable to sign spring-training leases, largely ineligible to be vaccinated yet, wondering if they would be sent to COVID hotspots as cases remain high.