Service Time Podcast

Service Time Podcast

di Dominic Cotroneo & Scott Sweeney

Stagione 1

The 90s: The strike that changed baseball forever

When we think about baseball labor, everyone instantly goes to 1994 to point fingers. But how did we get there? As we laid out in the 80s episode, distrust between owners and players was bubbling over especially with collusion cases coming to light. Donald Fehr would be running the show now, Marvin Miller and Curt Flood watching from the sidelines but offering support when needed. On the ownership side, in-fighting led to forcing a commissioner to resign and install one of their own to run the boyhood game: Allan H. "Bud" Selig. 1994 deserves plenty of conversation, and we are far from the only ones who have talked about the strike and its impact on the sport. But this episode really focuses on the before and after of 1994. What if replacement players were actually installed? Could revenue sharing really work between large market and small market teams? How do you get player's salaries back down despite record revenues pouring into the league? There are only three more episodes planned for the Service Time Podcast, and we hope you enjoy this episode as we enter the high leverage innings of our show. As always, you can find the articles and stories we mentioned in the episode over on our Substack page, servicetimepodcast.substack.com. You can an also upgrade to a paid subscription to support the program with ad-free listening in the substack app. Or you can subscribe for free and be notified via email when a new episode drops. Thanks for listening, next month we retrace the missteps by the league and the PA when it comes to steroids and the fallout from the Mitchell Report. The New Millennium arrives in October. Connect with the show: ServiceTimePod@Gmail.com

The 80s: A split season, and the chaos from the birth of free agency

Marvin Miller found himself pleasantly surprised by also worried. The ultimate goal of abolishing the Reserve Clause had tumbled in just ten years since he took the reins of the MLBPA. Free agency was a dream that suddenly brought new problems no one could have been prepared for. The battle over free agent compensation burned hot and cold for years, but reached a flash point in the 1980 negotiations, leading to the longest stoppage in baseball history ... to date. The owners continued to lose control of the players while their pockets were lined with a booming business, but the going price to keep quality players was getting more expensive. New owners embraced free agency, the old guard had to find ways to "get theirs" whether it was through roster shuffling ... or colluding to keep salaries down. As always, you can find the articles and stories we mentioned in the episode over on our Substack page, servicetimepodcast.substack.com. You can an also upgrade to a paid subscription to support the program with ad-free listening in the substack app. Or you can subscribe for free and be notified via email when a new episode drops. Thanks for listening, next month we reach the most destructive year of baseball's history and how they rebuilt from the 1994 strike. Connect with the show: ServiceTimePod@Gmail.com

The Business: How revenue flows from owners to players and beyond

Major League Basebally as an entity generated over $12B in revenue last season as the Dodgers topped the Blue Jays in a seven-game World Series for the ages. But how does that flow of cash meander between the owners and the players and every licensee, vendor, fan, and rightsholder around the game. Episode 4 lays out the current business landscape as broadly as possible, knowing a lot of the ways players and owners make and share their wealth could change with the new CBA. The purpose of this month's episode is to give you a primer to how things actually work before we tell you why some things are changing for next season. As always, you can find the articles and stories we mentioned in the episode over on our Substack page, servicetimepodcast.substack.com. You can an also upgrade to a paid subscription to support the program with ad-free listening in the substack app. Or you can subscribe for free and be notified via email when a new episode drops. Thanks for listening, up next, we turn back to the birth of free agency in 1976 and through the chaos of the 880s in the August episode on the way. Connect with the show: ServiceTimePod@Gmail.com

The Owners: Nine men who shaped how we see the game

There are many names to remember across baseball's history, but a handful tend to stick around longer than you realize. Sometimes the names adorn stadiums that stood for decades, or television channels bringing their teams to the masses, or their names can live in infamy depending on the city that you ask. Episode 3 focuses on nine owners we picked that fit this description. The owners we discuss are (in order) Connie Mack, Charles Comiskey, Philip Wrigley Jr., Branch Rickey/Walter O'Malley, Bill Veeck Jr., Charlie Finley, Ted Turner, George Steinbrenner. We wanted to focus on how these men rose to power, and how they maintained their image and legacy during their time as owners - and their impact on labor negotiations to this day. There's only so much we can dissect from each owner, but a few of these owners will keep popping up throughout the rest of the series. Connect with the show: ServiceTimePod@Gmail.com Subscribe to the substack (free or premium) ServiceTimePodcast.Substack.com

The Commissioners: The 10 men in charge of baseball

From Landis to Manfred, the “unknown soldier” to hardball, and everything in-between. This month’s episode focuses on the origins of the commissionership and how each man tweaked the role for their time in office. We try to touch on as much as possible, but for the sake of future episodes (starting with Episode 6: The Strike) we held back on Bud Selig and Rob Manfred, and focused more on the first eight commissioners of the game. There was even plenty left on the cutting room floor for Kuhn and Ueberroth for the sake of the split season of 1981 and the rest of the 80s episode coming in Augus for Episode 5. Our goal for this podcast is still to entertain and educate, not spin. You may disagree with the legacies of some commissioners, who actually helped the “good of the game.” We as a society like to point to singular villains, but in Episode 3 next month, we’ll explain how sometimes the owners were really handling the marionette strings for some commissioners. Thank you so much for listening to two episodes already, the support has been astounding to starting this from scratch. More ancillary content will come from the episodes as we start preparing for the negotiations for 2027 - which are already underway. Email: ServiceTimePod@Gmail.com Website: ServiceTimePodcast.Substack.com

The MLBPA and the Rise of Marvin Miller

The MLB Players Association has a reputation as one of the strongest unions in the world ... but it did not start with that moniker. In fact, it took a near century for baseball players to be represented as a group to bring the playing population forward. That man was Marvin Miller, but he had a long road ahead of him to help the players realize their value collectively versus individually. But during baseball's infancy, restrictive rules and savvy businessmen kept the players down as much as possible. The reserve clause, MLB's antitrust exemption, grievance hearings, suspensions, legal maneuvers, the list goes on how baseball operated sometimes without its players' best intentions. Welcome to the Service Time Podcast, hosted by Dominic Cotroneo and Scott Sweeney. We'd love to hear from you as we embark on these deep dives together. Website: ServiceTimePodcast.Substack.com Email: ServiceTimePod@Gmail.com Instagram: @ServiceTimePod

The Prologue: Welcome to the Service Time Podcast!

Welcome to our introductory episode of the Service Time Podcast. In this prologue we lay out the schedule ahead for the show and what we hope to gain out of the time we take to present what we've learned to you. We hope to create a full audiobook-length catalog by the end of the nine episodes we have scheduled, ready to deliver the history of baseball's labor negotiations and what it means for the future of the 2027 CBA. Hosts: Dominic Cotroneo & Scott Sweeney Website: ServiceTimePodcast.Substack.com Email: ServiceTimePod@gmail.com