In their 1991 bestseller Generations, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss observed that Kenesaw Mountain Landis (named after a Civil War battle that the Confederacy won), after jailing hundreds of leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (a.k.a. the "Wobblies") as a federal judge, then turned his cudgel to "cleaning up" baseball — and he also kept the sport lily-white until three years after his death in 1944.
Landis also despised Jews — probably because of Arnold Rothstein and his role in the 1919 "Black Sox Scandal" that directly led to his becoming baseball's first-ever commissioner, and allegedly hurled ugly slurs at other superstars who were not "white" enough to suit him; then again, Landis was born in Millville, Ohio — well south of where Interstate 70, the cultural boundary between the South and the Midwest, was built after his death (Millville is 30 miles north of Cincinnati — a city that H.L. Mencken once described as "combining Southern bigotry with Midwestern uptightness," and in 1990 was at the center of a controversy surrounding avant-garde photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and his alleged "pornographic" exhibits, leading to the first-ever criminal trial of a museum on "obscenity" charges in American history, but the museum was acquitted).
Now we have President Trump (who carried the district that includes Millville with 83% of the vote in 2024), who was born exactly 80 years after Landis, insisting that he has the (moral?) authority to force an end to baseball's ongoing labor dispute — and not only does he want to impose a hard salary cap (the "luxury tax" that MLB has being considered a "soft" salary cap), but he rejects any and all compromises, including an NFL-style progressive schedule (which would fit perfectly into Rob Manfred's preferred alignment of four 4-team divisions in each league after two expansion teams enter), as mentioned in these lines last week (and not for nothing, but if Trump wants to force his beliefs on the nation as a whole, he should instead move to implement year-round Daylight Saving Time, which he has gone on record as advocating — and as his buddies across the Bering Strait have had for 15 years).
One thing's for certain: due to the reigning political divide in America, any stance the President takes will automatically earn the unconditional support of the MAGA crowd, along with the steadfast opposition of the "democratic socialists," regardless of what Trump turns out to be for (and against).
This is no way to settle a labor dispute — in or out of sports — and gives new meaning to the term "bully pulpit."
Politics should play absolutely no role whatsoever in breaking this impasse. Too many innocent parties could get hurt if that is done, ranging from fans in cities of various market sizes to fans in cities that may or may not be in line for a future expansion team — speaking of which, if two new teams are indeed added, both of them need to be placed in Southern markets, since in that case either both leagues can have a four-team South division just like the NFL has, or all eight teams in the South can have their own division, in which case the owners will have to decide which league they are to go into (the American League can either have an East and South Division and the National League a North and West Division, or one league can have an East and North and the other league a South and West; the NFL had this arrangement in the early 1950s, with most of the eastern teams competing in the American Conference and most of the western teams competing in the National Conference).
And The Matt Cave, a Utah-based podcast, is wondering aloud as to whether any labor stoppage will indefinitely delay future expansion ("but if the owners and players can reach an agreement quickly, Commissioner Rob Manfred's goal of expanding to 32 teams by the end of his tenure in 2029 suddenly becomes much more realistic").
Based on 32 teams, and both leagues consisting of four 4-team divisions (the most likely ultimate scenario even if it isn't either the fairest or most logical one), teams can play their three division rivals 20 times each (for 60 games), the three teams in the same league that had a corresponding finish in their division the previous season (first vs. first, second vs. second, third vs. third, and fourth vs. fourth) nine times each (27 games) and the other nine teams in these same divisions six times each (54 games), all four teams within a division of the other league three times each, the divisional assignments rotating according to a four-year cycle (12 games), and the teams in the other three divisions of the other league that had had a corresponding finish in their division the previous season three times each (9 games), there's your new 162-game schedule format, with each team playing 18 "position games" — first vs. first, etc. — representing 11.1% of the total schedule, compared to the NFL's 17.6% (then again, your humble narrator, as Malcolm McDowell referred to himself in A Clockwork Orange, would support a "purist" rollback of the regular season to its "traditional" 154 games, to offset the extensions of the postseason — but that's a topic for a different article).
But the President is spoiling for a fight by looking to play an extremely dangerous game — a game that could very well spell the end of Major League Baseball as we know it; and it is unfortunate that Tony Clark, all six feet, seven inches of him, Santa Claus beard and all, was forced out as the union's executive director six months ago in a "scandal" that would have made Landis blush. Watching Clark stare down Trump would have been epic.
And just as the Crittenden Compromise arguably would have prevented the Civil War, so should a compromise, inspired by how the NFL has maintained both competitive balance and labor peace, be offered to prevent a "civil war" in baseball, which could drag on for years on end.
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