On Tuesday morning, it was reported by The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, Ken Rosenthal and Andy McCullough that Tony Clark was resigning as govt director of the Main League Baseball Gamers Affiliation, a publish he’d held since 2013. The information got here the very morning MLBPA management was because of begin its annual whistle-stop tour via all 30 main league spring coaching clubhouses. The MLBPA can also be making ready for negotiations on a brand new CBA; all indications are that we’re a bit of over 9 months from a lockout of some size.
Whereas the timing of the announcement was dangerous, Clark’s ouster was not itself unexpected. For a couple of 12 months, federal brokers have been investigating each the MLBPA and the NFLPA over monetary dealings associated to the group licensing agency OneTeam Companions. Clark was additionally the topic of a November 2024 whistleblower criticism alleging self-dealing and abuse of energy concerning the MLBPA-owned youth baseball firm Gamers Manner. Certainly Clark’s resignation got here upfront of one other shoe dropping in a single or each of these instances.
No, it seems. On Tuesday afternoon, Jeff Passan and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN reported that Clark had resigned in shame for a hitherto undiscovered purpose: An inside investigation had revealed that he had an “inappropriate relationship” along with his sister-in-law, who had been employed to work on the MLBPA in 2023.
That’s a brand new one.
Essentially the most salacious a part of this story is the connection, which has already generated — and can proceed to generate — an avalanche of snickering and off-color jokes. To wit: We don’t know what, precisely, “inappropriate” means right here, however no matter it’s, it’s nearly actually one thing that most individuals don’t do with their sister-in-law. Regardless, I don’t know if the connection itself would’ve been sufficient to knock Clark out of energy.
I can see the argument that this revelation would embarrass the union by affiliation, provided that considered one of Clark’s most necessary roles is (or was) because the group’s public frontman. You don’t need to head right into a contentious and necessary negotiation with a pacesetter tainted by this type of tawdry scandal.
You Aren’t a FanGraphs Member
It seems to be such as you aren’t but a FanGraphs Member (or aren’t logged in). We aren’t mad, simply upset.
We get it. You need to learn this text. However earlier than we allow you to get again to it, we might wish to level out a couple of of the great the reason why it’s best to turn out to be a Member.
1. Advert Free viewing! We can’t bug you with this advert, or every other.
2. Limitless articles! Non-Members solely get to learn 10 free articles a month. Members by no means get reduce off.
3. Darkish mode and Basic mode!
4. Customized participant web page dashboards! Select the participant playing cards you need, within the order you need them.
5. One-click knowledge exports! Export our projections and leaderboards in your private tasks.
6. Take away the images on the house web page! (Actually, this does not sound so nice to us, however some folks needed it, and we like to offer our Members what they need.)
7. Much more Steamer projections! We’ve handedness, percentile, and context impartial projections out there for Members solely.
8. Get FanGraphs Stroll-Off, a personalized 12 months finish assessment! Discover out precisely the way you used FanGraphs this 12 months, and the way that compares to different Members. Do not be a sufferer of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, completely for Members.
10. Assist help FanGraphs and our whole workers! Our Members present us with vital sources to enhance the location and ship new options!
We hope you may contemplate a Membership right now, for your self or as a present! And we understand this has been an awfully lengthy gross sales pitch, so we have additionally eliminated all the opposite advertisements on this article. We did not need to overdo it.
Inside sure boundaries, Clark’s private life, messy although it could be, is his personal enterprise. Right here’s the place it turns into the union’s enterprise: He put his sister-in-law on the union payroll. Absent a so-called “inappropriate relationship,” that’s the type of delicate nepotism that will get grudgingly tolerated in each trade in America. On this context, nevertheless Clark is now redirecting union funds towards, nicely, somebody who simply bought lots more durable to position on the household dinner desk. No matter whether or not the connection predates the job or vice-versa, this type of habits is frowned upon in most workplaces.
Keep in mind Jim McGreevey, the primary overtly homosexual governor within the nation? Individuals keep in mind that McGreevey resigned as governor of New Jersey in 2004 after he bought outed. The entire story is that McGreevey gave a state job to the person he was having an affair with. That very same man later threatened to sue McGreevey for sexual harassment, setting off a series of occasions that ended with Bob Menendez going to jail 24 years later.
An extramarital affair, on the whole, is a private downside. Not the taxpayers’ circus, not the taxpayers’ monkeys. Placing your facet piece on the payroll, nevertheless, is the type of factor that will get you fired, even from workplaces — like governor of New Jersey — which have historically been tolerant of a bit of graft.
And whereas Clark has neither been charged or convicted in both federal probe, we now have a sample of alleged habits that makes him look extraordinarily untrustworthy. Amongst such behaviors, as listed within the Passan-Van Natta ESPN article: Clark, together with then-NFLPA govt director Lloyd Howell, allegedly pressured an NFLPA lawyer to close down a assessment of a bonus plan that might’ve funneled cash to board members of OneTeam. (Did Howell himself resign in shame final 12 months? Don’t fear about it.)
Then there’s Gamers Manner, which has reportedly taken as much as $10 million from the union, with nearly nothing to point out for it and even much less in the way in which of clarification or transparency.
Certainly, this appears to be a case of the straw breaking the camel’s again. Clark may’ve gotten away with the connection had outdoors counsel — retained due to the 2 federal investigations — not been conducting an inside investigation within the first place. And the ESPN article cites sources saying the union’s participant leaders had been already on the fence about Clark due to these ongoing investigations. This new scandal was only a bridge too far.
A Tuesday afternoon assembly of the eight-player govt subcommittee (which contains Marcus Semien, Chris Bassitt, Paul Skenes, Jake Cronenworth, Brent Suter, Pete Fairbanks, Tarik Skubal, and Cedric Mullins, for these of you who need to preserve these names on file for when the CBA runs out) didn’t finish in a vote on a interim director, Passan says, although a selection may very well be made and voted on inside 24 hours.
If somebody’s going to take Clark’s place that rapidly, that would appear to point an inside candidate, almost certainly deputy govt director Bruce Meyer, the union’s lead negotiator. You’ve in all probability heard his title earlier than, both within the context of the final CBA, his function in Skubal’s arbitration listening to two weeks in the past, or within the context of the 2024 insurgency that sought to exchange Meyer with former MLBPA lawyer Harry Marino. An inside candidate, whether or not that be Meyer or another person, would provide continuity throughout this important time with out the luggage Clark’s been carrying round.
Make no mistake, this is a vital time for union management to maintain its affairs, so to talk, so as.
I fear that we’ve turn out to be a bit of too jaded about mendacity and corruption in America. There’s simply a lot of it that it’s arduous to not be inured. If you happen to let your self get indignant each time somebody in enterprise or politics bought caught lining their pockets with public cash or defrauding traders, employees, or prospects, you’d die of a coronary heart assault earlier than you bought off the bed and brushed your tooth.
It’s dangerous sufficient when businesspeople lie, or steal, or embezzle. However I’ve a tough time working up a simmering ethical outrage for a similar purpose I don’t get that huffy about gamers who get caught utilizing PEDs: They’re simply making an attempt too arduous to win. The concept behind capitalism is that the revenue motive will finally result in every thing required to run a working society. If there’s a necessity, somebody will revenue from filling it. You will discover that logic kind of persuasive, however a CEO who will get caught along with his hand within the until is following the identical fundamental incentive construction our financial system is constructed on.
For a determine able of public belief, it’s totally different. Individuals with the next skilled duty should be held to the next customary of habits. Stealing from a shopper is without doubt one of the methods a lawyer can get disbarred; stealing from the church is without doubt one of the methods a priest can get defrocked. Time was, betraying public belief by taking bribes would get an elected official thrown out of workplace and into jail. (Simply ask Bob Menendez.) Anybody so unable to curb their very own base avarice can’t be put able of public belief.
Clark has seen the union via its most turbulent interval in a era. Underneath his predecessor, the late Michael Weiner, each league and union had been too scarred by the 1994-95 strike to have interaction within the type of trench warfare that’s now commonplace in each labor negotiation. Underneath Clark, the MLBPA navigated its first new CBA after Weiner’s loss of life, then the contentious negotiations across the COVID restart in 2020, after which a lockout that was resolved over the objections of the gamers’ govt subcommittee. Commissioner Rob Manfred, a management-side labor lawyer first and baseball man second, has stated the upcoming CBA — his final — will likely be legacy-defining for him. I’m extremely skeptical {that a} lockout will imperil the 2027 season, however that doesn’t imply the negotiations themselves received’t be each vicious and high-stakes.
That is an terrible time for the MLBPA to lose its chief to scandal. The CBA doesn’t expire till December, however union management — each the gamers and their skilled workers — should set their priorities and marshal their forces now. On daily basis misplaced now weakens the union’s place down the road.
However that is an excellent worse time for the MLBPA to have a pacesetter it might probably’t belief, a pacesetter whose priorities and judgment may be referred to as into query. Even the looks of impropriety would sow doubt and dissension in a rank and file that already has 1000’s of voices elevating tons of of various, generally conflicting priorities.
The facility of a labor union is true there within the title. Particular person employees are weak; the ability of the workforce, if wielded collectively, is immense. However everybody has to have the identical priorities, and that begins on the high. If the manager director of the union is just not completely dedicated to advancing the trigger, how can the members be?