On the second day of 1977 Bowie Kuhn, then the commissioner of Major League Baseball, levied a one-year suspension against Ted Turner, the irrepressible owner of the Atlanta Braves. Earlier Kuhn fined Turner and the Braves $10,000. Kuhn had found Turner guilty of tampering with a free agent, Gary Matthews, before he became a free agent. At a World Series cocktail party, Turner had told Bob Lurie, owner of the San Francisco Giants, for whom Matthews had played, that he, Turner, would get Matthews no matter what Lurie offered to pay him.
“I’m thankful he didn’t order me shot,” Turner said.
In 1979 Kuhn fined Ray Kroc, owner of the San Diego Padres and the McDonald’s hamburger empire, $100,000, at the time the largest fine in baseball history, for tampering with Joe Morgan of the Cincinnati Reds and Graig Nettles of the New York Yankees. The penalty so discouraged Kroc that he withdrew from daily operation of the Padres.
“There’s a lot more future in hamburgers than in baseball,” Kroc said.
Other executives fell victim to Kuhn’s seriously aggressive view of tampering. None of his successors adopted as serious a stance on the issue. However, Rob Manfred, the current commissioner, is faced with what seems to be an obvious tampering case.
In this instance, though, the person who has allegedly tampered with a player is not an owner or an executive but another player.
No sooner had Bryce Harper signed a $330 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies than he announced his intention to recruit Mike Trout to join him in Philadelphia. Trout, generally considered the best player in baseball, lives in Millville, N.J., not far from Philadelphia.
The problem is Trout has a contract with the Anaheim Angels, which has two years left and will pay Trout $66.5 million.
That inconvenient fact did not deter Harper. “If you don’t think I’m not going to call Mike Trout to come to Philly in 2020, you’re crazy,” he said in a radio interview in Clearwater, Fla. And in case listeners thought he might be joking, Harper told reporters the next day, “If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t have said it.”
The Angels, of course, heard Harper’s comments across the country at their spring camp in Tempe, Ariz.
“The organization reached out to MLB a few days ago about the topic,” Tim Mead, the Angels’ vice president for communications, said in an e-mail, adding in reference to General Manager Billy Eppler, “Billy had us report that to the media and declined to comment beyond.”
Dan Halem, deputy commissioner and M.L.B.’s chief legal officer, did not return telephone calls to discuss tampering, but Pat Courtney, the chief communications officer, said in an e-mail, “The Commissioner said on Wednesday ‘Given our rules, players recruiting other players who are still under contract or under reserve to another club is a rule violation.’ He said we have spoken with both teams.’”
OK, so Rob Manfred has spoken to the Phillies and the Angels, neither of whom had anything to do with Harper’s comments. What about Harper?
Commissioners, including Kuhn, have never disciplined players for tampering. For use of performance-enhancing drugs, yes. For tampering, no. Commissioners have sent warning letters to players who have tampered with other players.
David (Big Papi) Ortiz received such a letter in July 2016 after he publicly urged the Boston Red Sox to sign Toronto’s Edwin Encarnacin, who was eligible for free agency after that season. Encarnacion could replace Ortiz, who was retiring, as the Red Sox designated hitter.
If a player were fined or suspended for alleged tampering, the union would certainly file a grievance. In such cases, arbitrators often follow precedent, and there is no precedent for a player being fined or suspended for tampering. However, to have a precedent, doesn’t there have to be a first time?
The Harper case would present a perfect precedent. His recruiting comments on Trout are not the first time Harper has opened his mouth when he should have kept it shut.
In 2012, his rookie season, the 19-year-old outfielder for the Washington Nationalstweeted a message to Giancarlo Stanton, who then played for the Miami Marlins.
“You can always play for the Nats!” Harper tweeted. “We will take youanytime! Get some red, white and blue in your life!”
Stanton replied, “Dang bro, if only my last name backwards wasn’t NotNats!”
The Trout incident, then, is Harper’s second attempt at tampering in his still young career. Sadly for him, he is a child of social media and isn’t sufficiently grown up to know how to use it sensibly. Perhaps some form of discipline would be appropriate.
It’s sort of silly, though, to levy a $5,000 or $10,000 fine for a player who just signed a 13-year contract worth $330 million.
I have a better idea, one I believe would be more effective in inducing Harper, as well as other players, not to tamper.
Major League Rule 3 (k) addresses tampering, saying, “… there shall be no negotiations or dealings respecting employment, either present or prospective, between any player, coach or manager and any major- or minor-league club other than the club with which the player is under contract.”
If Commissioner Manfred were to order Harper to write that rule 100 times on a blackboard or a yellow legal pad, I am pretty certain the $330 million man would not again utter anything that smacked of tampering. Of course, Harper or the union could file a grievance accusing Manfred of cruel and inhuman punishment, but he should be willing to take that chance to get Harper to shut up.
Ian Penny, the union’s general counsel, did not return calls seeking discussion of a possible grievance.
Despite the appearance of tampering in recent seasons, no one has been found guilty of it. The Tampa Bay Rays lodged a complaint with the commissioner’s office over Joe Maddon’s opting out of his contract with the Rays and moving to the Chicago Cubs in 2015.
“Major League Baseball,” read a statement from the commissioner’s office, “has concluded its tampering investigation regarding Joe Maddon’s departure from the Tampa Bay Rays and his subsequent hiring as manager of the Chicago Cubs. The investigation produced no finding of a violation of Major League Rule 3(k) on Tampering.”
Not all of the suspicious cases are investigated or have even induced complaints. But there have been circumstances that have raised suspicion:
Theo Epstein’s move from the Red Sox to the Cubs as president of baseball operations in 2011
Jed Hoyer’s exit from the Padres to join Epstein in 2011
Don Mattingly’s departure as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers after the 2015 season to become manager of the Miami Marlins
J.D. Drew opting out of his contract with the Dodgers after the 2006 season and signing with the Red Sox for the 2007 season
Everybody involved in these moves denied that tampering was a factor in their decisions, and no tampering was proved.
When Bud Selig was commissioner, he had a laissez faire attitude toward tampering. If a club didn’t lodge a complaint, he didn’t investigate the issue.
I asked Fay Vincent, Selig’s predecessor, last week about his view of tampering.
“Tampering restrictions are in my opinion a way to limit the free market for employees,” he said in an e-mail. “If an employee is under contract there are legal restrictions on interfering with that contract. Yet in baseball there are some additional limits imposed that have been eroded as the commercial and legal world made them seem silly. I think there is no reason to try to protect contracts from tampering by using any standard but the legal ones that exist as a matter of state laws. We have enough legal dross in baseball. Is there reason to bring back the anti-fraternizing rules?”
Despite his view of tampering, in 1990 Vincent fined the Yankees $25,000 and ordered them to pay the Angels $200,000 for tampering with Dave Winfield after they traded him to the Angels.
As for Vincent’s mention of anti-fraternization rules, he referred to an earlier time in baseball when players from opposing teams weren’t permitted to talk to each other on the field before games and that game’s umpires sat in the stands during batting practice, wrote down the uniform numbers of players who “fraternized” and reported the players who violated the rule.
Now M.L.B. is going to experiment with roboumps. I wonder how they would have dealt with fraternization.