Showing posts with label Player Discipline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Player Discipline. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Shameless Plug: Social Media in Sports: Can Professional Sports League Commissioners Punish 'Twackle Dummies'?

Please excuse this interruption to your regularly scheduled May Day reading as I shamelessly plug my article, which was recently published by the Pace I.P., Sports & Entertainment Law Forum. 

With celebrities, politicians, athletes, and non-athlete-kinda-Twitter famous-so not really celebrities, finding themselves in hot water due to some unfortunate comments they made via social media, I thought out loud---well---actually wrote out loud, as to whether professional sports league commissioners had the authority to punish their respective sports stars for tweeting bone-headed comments.   From my abstract:

Monday, October 3, 2011

Demotion as Discipline: Learning to be a "Big Leaguer"

Florida Marlins' twenty-four-year-old, up-and-coming star, Logan Morrison was sent down to the minor leagues right after a game where he batted third in the lineup. Marlin brass told Lo Mo Morrison (LoMo) that he was being sent down for "baseball reasons" and cited his .240 batting average as evidence.  However, two days after being recalled, Morrison and the MLB Players' Association (MLBPA) filed a grievance against the Florida Marlin for what they see as a wrongful demotion.
Morrison believes that his demotion to AAA New Orleans was a form of discipline without just cause.  At the time,  LoMo was second on the Marlins in OPS, second in home runs, and third in runs batted in.  Additionally, the demotion came the day after LoMo missed a team meet and greet with Marlin season ticket holders.  LoMo had asked his Union Representative, Wes Helms, if he could miss the event, at which Helms replied that it was ok for him to miss.  Helms was released the next day; (perhaps due to his part in the ordeal in giving faulty advice).  Moreover, Larry Beinfest, Marlin President of Baseball Operations commented to the press that LoMo needed some more education on "being a major leaguer."

So the question remains, when can a major league player who has minor league options remaining be sent down to the minor leagues?  For that answer, let's turn to the text of the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement.