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Last week, it was reported in multiple outlets that a group of Major League Baseball (MLB) players urged Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) Executive Director Tony Clark to hire Deputy Executive Director Bruce Meyer, the union's top lawyer , firing him and signing him to replace him with former union lawyer Harry Marino. The series of events was shockingly at odds with the MLBPA's history and reflected that at least some of its players appear to have a poor understanding of labor relations in sports.
The “coup attempt”.
Clark, in his 11th year as general manager after a 15-year big league career, reportedly held a nearly three-hour video call with player members of the board last Monday to discuss the possibility of Marino replacing Meyer. Marino, a 33-year-old former minor league player and associate at the prestigious Williams & Connolly LLP, played a central role in the unionization of minor league players under the MLBPA umbrella in 2022 and the collective bargaining agreement the next year was negotiated with MLB. However, during this process, tensions reportedly arose between Marino on the one hand and Clark and Meyer on the other, which led to Marino's resignation from the union.
Some MLB players are apparently upset about the results of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement with MLB (not to be confused with the minor league player contract negotiated in 2023), in which Meyer was the negotiator. This past offseason felt slow for some players. Only four contracts totaling at least $100 million were signed, compared to nine last offseason. Then players were worried when the San Francisco Giants released infielder JD Davis after he won his salary negotiation and was set to make $6.9 million. Nevertheless, arbitral awards were never fully guaranteed.
Finally, some players apparently believe that Meyer is too closely aligned with super agent Scott Boras and theoretically favors his clients over the rest of the union members. Boras denied these allegations and described the situation as a “coup.”
While it's not clear whether Marino approached the players or vice versa, it's clear that Marino is trying to take advantage of the situation to replace Meyer (if not Clark). A PowerPoint presentation criticizing Clark and Meyer reportedly circulated. Marino then released an action plan for his first 250 days as a member of the union's leadership, including conducting an audit of the union's finances and vague ideas about returning power to the players.
During the call, Clark rejected calls to remove Meyer. Next, in a March 21 letter to players, Meyer defended his record and pushed back against the criticism. The future is uncertain.
Meyer's record
News articles about the situation describe Meyer as the union's lead negotiator in the 2022 collective bargaining negotiations after joining the union in 2018. Some articles note that he joined the MLBPA after a two-year stint with the National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA).
These blurbs don't even begin to do justice to Meyer's resume, which too many MLB players apparently don't know or value.
Meyer began his legal career in 1986 at the leading law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. At the time, under the leadership of the now legendary Jim Quinn, Weil represented NBA players, NFL players and their unions in labor negotiations and litigation with leagues and teams.
During the formative years of his legal career, Meyer was a key part of the team that represented NFL players in a marathon trial. After a failed strike in the 1987 season, NFL players played without a collective bargaining agreement until the 1992 season.
During this time, players have waived the NFL's free agency restrictions on a case-by-case basis. In Powell (1989), the players found that they could assert antitrust claims if they decertified the NFL Players Association as their negotiating agent. Then, in McNeil (1992), a jury awarded eight players damages arising from the NFL's restrictive “Plan B” free agency system. A few weeks later, a court issued an injunction against Plan B in Jackson (1992). Finally, in White (1993), the players filed a class-action lawsuit worth hundreds of millions of dollars against NFL clubs over their previous restrictions on free agency was ultimately decided in favor of players receiving full free agency rights for the first time. The Supreme Court, via Brown (1996), ultimately took part in setting the limits of nonstatutory work release, which protects leagues from antitrust scrutiny when they negotiate restrictive rules with their players.
Meyer was on hand for all of these cases, most of which occurred before Marino was old enough to read. In addition, his colleague in these disputes was Jeffrey Kessler, now at Winston & Strawn LLP and now recognized as a leading litigator on behalf of professional and amateur athletes. Kessler and Meyer were the senior lieutenants under Quinn's tutelage, developing and refining strategies on behalf of professional athletes that are now the accepted rulebook.
The Labor History of Baseball
The antitrust claims that Meyer and his colleagues asserted in the mid-1990s were not available to MLB players at the time because of baseball's unusual antitrust exemption. Regardless, the NFL and MLB players' approach was consistent in three ways: (1) avoid regression; (2) seek incremental change; and (3) stay united.
In 1994, then-MLBPA executive director Don Fehr was poised to enter the pantheon of sports villains by leading a strike by MLB players that canceled the World Series. Fehr did this to resist MLB's efforts to impose a salary cap, a pervasive goal of MLB clubs that had already made its way into the NBA and NFL by that point. The MLBPA was only able to take such dramatic action because of the solidarity that had been ingrained in the union since its founding under the leadership of former steelworker economist Marvin Miller. The MLB did not receive its salary cap, the MLBPA won several legal battles against the clubs, and successfully advocated for the repeal of the antitrust exemption for MLB players in the Curt Flood Act of 1998, named after the former All Star who sacrificed his career (and in a certain way his life too) consists of fighting for a free hand.
To go back even further, MLB players didn't gain free agency through a feat of initiative like Marino seems to promise. Instead, free agency was the result of an incremental approach like that taken by NFL players in the 1980s and '90s. At the end of the 1975 season, the MLBPA filed a grievance stating that players John Messersmith and Dave McNally had expired the option years of their contracts and were therefore free agents. An arbitrator agreed, and both a federal district court and an appeals court declined to depart from that conclusion. The case gave players leverage to cement free agency in the 1976 collective bargaining agreement.
The next pitch
Fehr retired from the MLBPA in 2009 before being persuaded the next year to take the reins of the NHLPA, historically the most ineffective union in professional sports. In 2016, Fehr recruited Meyer to leave his prestigious position as a partner at Weil and lead collective bargaining efforts at the NHLPA. Fehr undoubtedly did this because at the time, other than Quinn and Kessler, there was no lawyer in the world who had more experience in collective bargaining with professional sports leagues. And in fact, the NHLPA is in better shape today than at any point in its pre-Fehr history.
Meyer's letter to players rightly warned players against suggestions for “easy solutions.” In fact, the history of industrial relations in sport shows that nothing is given but must be won on a case-by-case basis and through difficult negotiations. Nobody knows this better than Meyer. MLB players would do well to listen to him.
I am senior counsel in the Boston office of Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete LLP, a national management and employment services firm. I have over 13 years of experience in law firms, in-house and in academia, with extensive experience in sports, litigation and labor and employment. Specifically, I served as General Counsel for Major League Soccer's DC United and affiliates from November 2018 to March 2021. Otherwise, I have extensive experience advising teams, athletes, agents and other parties in the sports industry on a variety of matters. I have published more than 30 academic publications on sports law and economics and am currently a lecturer in sports law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. I graduated from UMass-Amherst in 2006 with a BS in Sports Management and received my JD/MBA from Fordham Law School and its Graduate School of Business in 2010.
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