The Major League Baseball lockout has begun. For the first time in over 25 years, a work stoppage for the league has gone into effect as of Thursday morning, following months of negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players Association over a new labor contract. Owners have locked out players after bargaining talks failed before deadline — the biggest issues on the table were over pay, when players are paid, and restricting players to teams.
As ESPN explains, “During a lockout, which is a labor-relations tool used by management to keep employees from working until a deal is agreed upon, team officials and players cannot communicate in any way. Major league free agency and trades of players on 40-man rosters end immediately.”
Trevor Noah took a look at the historic lockout on The Daily Show on Thursday, and made some strong points. “In some ways, being a baseball player is unlike any other job in the world. I mean, for one thing, if your entire office got into a brawl, you wouldn’t go back to work five minutes later, like nothing happened. But also being a baseball player is still a job, which means that sometimes they get into disagreements with their bosses. And now one of those disagreements has shut down the entire league.”
The lockout freezes all business within the MLB until a deal is reached, which means no trading or signing, and no players are allowed inside club facilities. Plus, if you go to the official MLB website or a team website, all images and videos of players have been removed.
“They took all the players’ photos off the MLB websites,” said Noah. “You know who’s feeling great about this right now? Anyone who collects baseball cards. ‘Well, well, well, you guys said there was no reason for me to have a photo of Albert Pujols. But now I’m the only guy who knows what he looks like! Ha ha ha!'”
“Same time though, this is all happening in the offseason,” Noah pointed out. “So there’s plenty of time for them to work out their differences before the season starts. You know, this is like a haunted house owner getting tough with the employees in July. It doesn’t really matter. And you know, they’re going to work something out because both sides need each other. Like the MLB, they can’t go out and hire regular people. We all saw how that turned out with 50 Cent.“