Recover from the lust of Tony Clark’s fall, escape from the past Accused of inappropriate relationship with his sister-in-law — who was also an employee of the union he ran — following a federal investigation into his leadership of the Major League Baseball Players Association, the fallout from a more than decade-long tenure that ended spectacularly Tuesday, and what’s left is opportunity. Amid one of its lowest moments in more than half a century since its formation, the MLBPA could use Clark’s surprise resignation to help save the 2027 season.
Whoever ascends to the MLBPA’s vacant executive director position, which the union hopes to fill by Wednesday, will inherit an organization facing its biggest challenge in a generation: MLB owners intend to hit the salary cap on Dec. 1, upon the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement. Players are prepared to fight it. However, for the fight to be effective, they have to accept that the biggest priority is to ensure that no games are missed after the expected lockdown of the league. And this is where the players need to hold their new leadership more accountable than their previous leadership.
When choosing a new guild leader, players must make it clear what they want. This goes beyond “no limits.” It acknowledges that the game’s payroll inequality alienates fans and is in need of a massive refresh. It embodies the core principles of creativity, thoughtfulness and open-mindedness, catering to fanatics with solution-oriented proposals. It makes short-tenured players and left-behind middle-class guys feel as important as $40 million-a-year stars. More than anything, it positions itself to guide the game away from its various disastrous scenarios and toward compromise.
It’s impossible to say whether the league and its owners, who are trying to overthrow a system that no longer suits their needs, will meet the union where it stands. Perhaps MLB, encouraged by public polling that shows strong support for the cap, will stand firm in its position. If the union presents a reasonable alternative to a cap and the league still refuses to budge, whatever goodwill MLB has built up by saying it cares about competitive balance will disappear.
It’s a tricky balance for the new executive director — more than a dozen players familiar with the union discussions are telling ESPN that the choice of deputy executive director and Clark’s former No. 2 Bruce Meyer is likely to follow through on these negotiations at least on an interim basis. After a meeting Tuesday afternoon in which some player leaders pushed for a vote to confirm the mayor but were rejected by those who wanted to talk to their teammates first, the union plans to meet again on Wednesday and consider its options. Meyer has the support of a majority of the eight-member executive subcommittee that serves as the final voice of the players. He negotiated the previous labor agreement and is expected to do the same for this one. That is the option of least resistance.
That comes with history. Two springs ago, former MLBPA lawyer Harry Marino organized a group to oust Meyer. In an informal conversation with Marino, dozens of player leaders pledged to support Meyer’s removal. Clark saw the attempt for Meyer’s job as an indirect challenge to himself, mobilizing allies to help save Meyer, who sent the players a letter of more than 2,000 words outlining his accomplishments. In it, he referenced the 2022 negotiations, in which a 99-day lockout ended when the subcommittee voted 8-0 against MLB’s final proposal, but were outvoted 26-4 by a rank and file that wanted no part of missing games for the first time since 1995.
“Some players left the deal disappointed that we didn’t achieve more and especially that we didn’t lose games to see if we achieved more. [gains] Can be made,” Meyer wrote. “Obviously, I was and still am sympathetic to these players and this situation.”
There is nothing in the 2022 talks that would guarantee the Games would be lost. It was almost a status quo deal – a solid deal for the players in many ways, but a far cry from the fundamental change in the economic system that MLB wants today. Of course, Meyer could argue that such a stance is simply meeting owners where they are — sources told ESPN that several of them have said privately that they are so invested in achieving the salary cap hit that they feel the 2027 season is a worthy sacrifice to achieve their goal.
Any position that depends on sidelining baseball is short-sighted, ill-conceived, and exceptionally problematic, and if players want to maintain any kind of moral high ground, they cannot entertain the notion that anyone benefits from the game being idle. There are plenty of ways to maintain cap-free play, but they depend on the union’s willingness to propose clever paths that satisfy big- and small-market teams, a thorny proposition, yet one in which the union unquestionably finds itself.
Bosses believe the union is weak and in some cases they are right. An anonymous whistleblower complaint sent to the National Labor Relations Board in November 2024, accusing Clark of a variety of improprieties, was initially dismissed by the MLBPA as “completely without merit.” Between the nepotism that indirectly led to his ouster and the ongoing federal investigation into other elements of the complaint, its merits grow by the day and speak to an organization with deeply flawed processes and unreliable checks and balances. It was widely known that Clark had hired his sister-in-law to run the huge new Arizona-based office, which current and former union employees derided as “wasteful” and “unnecessary”. Nobody stopped it.
Despite unsuccessful attempts to expel the mayor in 2024, the players emerged with the intention of rebelling at the union calling for a full audit of its finances to uncover any wasteful or inappropriate spending. Instead, Clark initiated a financial review that – with much less an in-depth look at the MLBPA’s books – left players convinced that the union’s unwillingness to embrace full transparency meant it was hiding something. That left the Eastern District of New York, which has empaneled a grand jury in the investigation of Clark and Union, wondering the same.
How cynical were the officers and staff about Clark? various cleveland patron Sources said the player was planning to discuss whether he would be willing to take a pay cut from his $3.76 million salary before the union abruptly canceled its scheduled meeting with the team on Tuesday.
That level of interest, however, is where the union evolves from a group that is often scrutinized or bored by the intricacies of labor relations, into a powerful, intimidating group of 1,200. The MLBPA did not earn a reputation as the strongest union in the country during its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s. It set goals, planned how to achieve them, and worked together. The amount of solidarity displayed by members of the executive subcommittee on Tuesday is a quality better demonstrated than spoken.
And where that solidarity starts is from the bottom up. A strong labor union guides its leaders, not the other way around. It can have an honest conversation about whether, even in an uncapped system, extraordinary top-level salaries give teams an excuse not to spend on the middle class and whether there are solutions to this. It can say that, yes, Los Angeles Dodgers And New York Mets The players are great, but that greatness comes with a price that may ultimately hinder the union more than help.
The mayor’s leadership style, as an aide paraphrased his Tuesday statement, is “furious outrage.” He is a fighter first and foremost, a born litigator, and while he has rubbed many players up the wrong way to the brink of losing their jobs, they have no doubt about his willingness to take on the bosses. They also know times of great import require nuance and institutional knowledge, and whoever takes the reins needs to sort out the agents’ bright ideas; Lean on former union stalwarts like Donald Fehr and Gene Orza for guidance; And recognize that the union employee is competent and capable of all the institutional problems that exist and will thrive in an environment that encourages him to find holistic solutions to complex problems.
There is hope in an MLBPA that, even as MLB attacks it with cap proposals, does not forget its purpose by getting lost in its opponent. The Tony Clark era, which was home to questionable decision-making, ended with an unresolved federal investigation and a disgraced executive director. The next incarnation of the MLBPA should be something better. It is not only the Union that needs this. It’s a complete game.
