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Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark, right, and chief negotiator Bruce Meyer arrive for negotiations with the players union in an attempt to reach an agreement to salvage March 31 openers and a 162-game season, March 1, 2022, at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida.
On Tuesday morning, Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal, and Andy McCullough of The Athletic dropped a bit of a bombshell. MLBPA director Tony Clark, who has headed the players’ union since 2013, is expected to resign shortly. The union has been under a federal investigation by the eastern district of New York since last fall in a case involving improperly using licensing and equity to enrich themselves.
The news coincides with the cancellation of Clark and the union’s usual visits to each spring training camp to speak to players. They were supposed to begin early Tuesday morning at the Cleveland Guardians complex in Arizona, but the visit was promptly cancelled at the last minute.
With the union preparing for a major showdown with Commissioner Rob Manfred and team owners next offseason to negotiate the next CBA, this puts the union in a tricky position. On the other hand, Clark hasn’t exactly done particularly well in recent negotiations either. Assuming the report is accurate, they will have time to pivot to new leadership in time for the CBA battle, but this still leaves the union in a tough spot and in need of a experienced hand to lead the sport through the next round of labor wars.
Deputy chief of the MLBPA, Bruce Meyer, who helped spearhead the last CBA negotiations in 2021-2022 as chief negotiator isn’t mentioned as potentially implicated in the case. That may be the answer, but this is obviously a developing story. Per The Athletic, Clark and the union hadn’t responded to questions as of this writing.
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