In 2017, after the Houston Astros, his hometown, won the World Series, Senator Ted Cruz participated in the team’s parade. He posted a photo of himself alongside Astros shortstop Carlos Correa and the championship trophy.
And when Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) called the Astros “miserable cheats” during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing last year, Cruz came to his defense.
“I think the lurid lies about the Astros should be erased and forgotten by everyone,” Cruz said.
Since this is Dodgers territory, we side with Sasse, but we respect Cruz for defending his team.
Fans may not have a chance to support their team next year. The 2022 season is in jeopardy and Cruz could be the “only person who could prevent it.”
In April, after Georgia passed laws that advocates say make voting difficult, MLB moved the All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver.
“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports the voting rights of all Americans and opposes restrictions on the polls,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
In response, Cruz and two other senators introduced a bill to revoke the league’s antitrust exemption.
“If Major League Baseball has allowed themselves to be politicized, there is no reason for them to get special benefits that no one else has,” Cruz said in an interview with the Times.
Since 1950, according to Indiana University professor Nathaniel Grow, Congress has held more than 60 hearings to debate the exemption, never repealing it. History suggests that the exemption will stand, that the All-Star game will be played in Denver, and that Cruz will have accomplished nothing more than throwing a few verbal darts at the league.
If Cruz really wants to take action to punish Manfred and the league’s owners, he can.
The league’s collective bargaining agreement expires in December. With relationships between the owners and the players union cold at best, fans are bracing themselves for the possibility that the owners could lock out players before the 2022 season can begin.
Cruz and the Senate could remove the lockout letter. Under the Protection of the Right to Organize Act (PRO), lockouts would be prohibited, unless employees have already gone on strike.
The players union has publicly supported the PRO Law. The league has said nothing, knowing that the number of senators who have pledged to vote in favor is not enough to win.
Senator Ted Cruz gestures while speaking during an interview with The Associated Press in Jerusalem. (Sebastian Scheiner / Associated Press)
(Sebastian Scheiner / Associated Press)
Congressman Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Who has guided the PRO Act through the House of Representatives, said he has no idea whether the bill can be approved by the Senate.
“The Senate is not a functioning legislative body at this time,” Scott told The Times.
In a democracy, from the House of Representatives to the eighth grade student council, the majority rule. Except in the Senate, where the majority is often not enough to govern.
If all the Democratic senators and the two independents who accompany them voted in favor of the PRO Act, the bill could get 50 votes. But in the Senate that would not be enough to pass. The bill needs the votes of at least 10 Republican senators.
In normal times, the suggestion that Republicans would support a bill that would strengthen organized labor would be insane. However, the traditional alliance between Republicans and big business has been unraveled, with heavyweights from corporations such as American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Dell, Delta and Home Depot speaking alongside MLB, and against voting restrictions. .
Cruz mocked Coca-Cola as “Coca-Cola awake.” Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, criticized the corporations for “behaving like a parallel government.” Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, told American Compass: “Corporate America is [el] Democratic Party. The American worker is the Republican Party. “
In fact, Cruz said that is the direction his party should take.
“I think that, as Republicans, we should be the party of working men and women,” Cruz told the Times. “We should be the party of the steel and construction workers, and of the police and firefighters, and of the waiters and waitresses, and of the men and women with calluses on their hands.”
These working men and women are mainly union members. The PRO Law strengthens unions, in part, by prohibiting “right-to-work” statutes, under which employees can benefit from union contracts without paying dues, and by prohibiting companies from requiring them to attend meetings intended for employees to vote against a union.
The PRO Law is decidedly pro-labor, but Cruz is against it.
“I don’t think the political answer is for Congress to tip the playing field in favor of union leaders,” Cruz said.
For Scott, that would be leveling the playing field. But let’s get back to baseball: Would preventing a lockout tilt the playing field in favor of the players?
“As much as I like baseball players,” Cruz said, “when I think of a group of oppressed workers, I’m not sure professional baseball players are on that list.”
While labor disputes in sports tend to be characterized as billionaire owners versus millionaire players, 46% of the players on the Opening Day charts are making less than a million dollars this year, with 35% below the $ 600,000, according to the Associated Press.
The average major league career lasts between three and four years. Major leaguers lost 63% of their salary last season, and a lockout would put their salary at risk next season.
“The star players could obviously see for themselves,” Scott said. “But, for everyone else, the folks with three to five year careers, the guys sitting on the bench, the utility players, they’re just helpless.
“That is why there are negotiations.”
Cruz loves baseball. He recalled how, as a young man, he sat through the 22 innings of a game between the Astros and Dodgers at the Astrodome, one that ended at 2:52 am, with a single off the glove of emergency first baseman Fernando Valenzuela.
“Attending 14 innings is great,” Cruz said, “but a 21-inning stage is surreal.”
The opening day of the 2022 season would be the first in three years with packed crowds and military overflights, with red, white and blue flags on the rails of the stadium and huge American flags displayed on the outside field.
But none of that is assured as long as the threat of a lockout exists. Senator Cruz, you can lead an effort to save the national pastime. It would be, dare we say, the most patriotic thing.
To read this note in Spanish, click here.
