The subject line sums up my question. What is it about hockey and football that allows/encourages players to holdout when under contract? Why doesn’t this happen in baseball or basketball?
I can remember basketball draft picks holding out, but that ended when the NBA instituted a pay-scale for draft picks. And I know baseball draft picks will sometimes holdout on signing and go back into the draft the following year. But that isn’t quite the same thing. What about players on the major-league level?
Bonus question for you Euro dopers: Does anything similar happen in soccer, cricket or even the euro basketball leagues?
I’m talking about guys whose contracts are guaranteed, but refuse to play the season because they want more money/don’t like the team/whatever. Players like Duce Staley right now or Alexi Yashin a few years ago in Ottawa.
The exact same thing can’t happen over here because none of our sports operate a draft system. Instead, if a player decides he doesn’t like his contract mid-season, or decides he would be better off playing for a different team he would generally make a nuisance of himself or just play badly enough that his club are happy enough to off-load him somewhere else. Mid-season transfers are quite normal though, so yes it does happen.
One name that does spring to mind, though, is that of Pierre van Hooijdonk, who outright refused to play for his club, Nottingham Forest, at the start of the the 1998-99 season because he didn’t think his team mates were good enough and wanted new signings to be made. He missed the first eleven games of that season and was transferred to Dutch club Vitesse Arnhem at the end of it.
When last I heard he was suing Forest for £650,000, which he claimed was owed to him as part of the transfer fee. Astonishingly the sum includes a loyalty bonus for the 1998-99 season. Forest’s lawyers have other ideas.
That example relates to football (soccer) btw. There is much less transfer activity in cricket and contractual wranglings usually only affect players who spend the season playing international matches but are still salaried by county (i.e. club) teams.
Baseball used to have holdouts all the time. However, with salary arbitration and guaranteed contracts, there isn’t much need to hold out in the hopes of getting a better salary. You either have gotten one in the offseason through arbitration or the threat of it forcing a team to make a deal or you signed a good contract as a free agent.
The baseball players have a lot more leverage than football players in negotiations.
Football, basketball, and hockey have many more restrictions on free agency than baseball. And there are salary caps in football and basketball to further complicate matters.
And in football there are no guaranteed contracts. One bad injury and “poof” there goes your salary.
Compare that to Albert Belle who is still being paid by the Baltimore Orioles three years after playing his last game for them because his contract still is in effect.
Or guys like Damion Easley and Kevin Appier being released despite the fact that their old teams still had to pay over $10 million each to them.
To add to BobT’s point, comparing the labour practices of NHL, MLB, NFL and NBA players is pointless. Although they’re all stinkin’ rich and the general issues are similar, the truth is that the systems are all VERY different.
The baseball player’s union has done an exceptionally good job of putting its members in a position where they don’t have to hold out. It would be counterproductive to hold out; the system promises them more riches if they cooperate with the way things work than if they don’t. As you point out, though, baseball draft picks do hold out from time to time, like J.D. Drew; however, it’s not usually a big deal in baseball because baseball drat picks, unlike football or basketball picks, are usually years of practice away from anyone knowing who they are.
Basketball is the exact opposite, sort of; the basketball system places all the power in the hands of the owners, but does so in a way that gives the player exceptionally good security if he plays along. NBA contracts are guaranteed and are insanely difficult to get out of, even if a player retires; combined with the NBA’s tremendously restrictive salary cap, it’s hard to move players around and not worth a player’s while to avoid signing a contract, since the NBA has maximum individual salaries anyway. Star players are mostly being paid almost as much as they CAN be paid. Vince Carter can’t hold out next year if he has a really great year, because he can’t be paid any more money than he already is.
The NFL and NHL, by comparison, lie somewhere in between. The NHL has no salary cap at all and a strange, incoherent free agency system based on a weird mix of age, years of experience, and various levels of free agency that combine to drive salaries up in some cases more than others and, for whatever reason, causes all the lousiest free agents to play for the Rangers. The NFL basically places all power in the owners’ hands with no collective power in the union at all.