I'm one of those people who reflexively takes a union's side in just about any union/management dispute, especially in sports. Neither the "they should be happy playing a boy's game" argument nor the "spoiled millionaires" argument holds any sway with me, and the "higher salaries equals higher ticket prices for the little guy" argument has been debunked time and time again. If there's money to be made, and there clearly is, then the players generating the revenue should get a large share of it, and their union should be there for them to make sure they get it.

This is not one of those disputes.

The MLBPA has not been having a good year. They've been hammered in the court of public opinion over steroids (unfairly, in my opinion -- it's their job to protect the members of their union, not the 'integrity of the game'. In fact that's why MLB needs an impartial commissioner rather than one who's in the pocket of the owners... but that's another blog post.) But taking teams to court to try and get players out of making charitable payments? This is just idiocy. Is there no one in the MLBPA capable of judging how things like this look from the outside, or do they just not care?

I don't even agree with the internal logic here. Sure, maybe it's not expressly allowed by the CBA (although it's not expressly forbidden either) but if a player doesn't want contributions to a team's charity written into their contract, isn't that a problem for their agent to solve in contract negotiations? Doesn't the very nature of a contract negotiation make these contributions voluntary? I mean, the Marlins weren't going to walk away from Hanley Ramirez if he didn't cough up $100K a year for their Community Foundation. Frank McCourt isn't seriously going to tell Chad Billingsley "Hey, kid, we love your stuff on the mound, but if you don't give to this charity, I don't want you wearing Dodger blue." Or hell, maybe McCourt is that dumb, but  as the team owner it's his choice to be so dumb as to let a key player go over something like that.

It's also the player's choice to not sign a long-term contract if they don't like a clause in it.

The MLBPA used to be the gold standard for sports unions, both in terms of how they handled the owners and in terms of how they managed their public image. Instead they're now spending their time trying to make their clients look like stingy jerks, during a time when a large portion of the public seems to think they're already cheating jerks. Bud Selig can consider it one of his greatest triumphs that he's knocked Humpty Dumpty off that wall. And make no mistake about it. Idiotic actions like this grievance indicate pretty clearly that something is broken in the MLBPA.