Adam LaRoche and his son

The bigger issue that should make the morning TV news shows more "up in arms" should be a multi-millionaire taking his kid into the neighborhood the White Sox' play in 81 times a year.

 

If you're going to have a club policy, decide on a club policy and announce it in the offseason. To everyone. The White Sox prior club policy (in the absence of anything written so then defaulting to past practice) was that you could bring your kid in all the time.

It's ridiculously easy to avoid situations like this, assuming you're acting in good faith.

 

That's not true. The neighborhood the White Sox play in is absolutely fine. I feel a lot safer there, in fact, than the outdoor frat kegger seven miles north.

 

The phrase I heard was "handshake agreement."

 

Here's a piece in Baseball Prospectus from a guy I respect quite a bit. He's a special counsel for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association when he's not writing about baseball.

Baseball Prospectus | Prospectus Feature: Adam LaRoche's Potential Grievance

In Warrior & Gulf, one of the three Supreme Court cases that developed the scope and process for labor arbitration known as the Steelworkers Trilogy, Justice Douglas wrote, “the labor arbitrator's source of law is not confined to the express provisions of the contract, as the industrial common law—the past practice of the industry and the shop—is equally a part of the collective bargaining agreement although not expressed in it.”

A year later arbitrator Richard Mittenthal, at the urging of Archibald Cox, wrote the seminal treatise on past practice for theMichigan Law Review. He wrote, “past practice may serve to clarify, implement, and even amend contract language. But these are not its only functions. Sometimes an established practice is regarded as a distinct and binding condition of employment, one which cannot change without mutual consent of the parties.”

In order to prove that there is a past practice, the party claiming the practice exists must show that there is: clarity—the practice can be proven to exist; longevity, consistency, and repetition—the practice occurs regularly and not randomly over a period of time; and mutuality and acceptability—both parties know and accept the practice.

In the LaRoche situation, he reportedly brought his son into the clubhouse all season in 2015. Kenny Williams has been quoted as saying, “I just told him that he needed to dial it back, that’s all…. But the kid is there every day: in the clubhouse and on the field, during drills, everywhere.” That quote covers every prong of establishing the past practice. It happened all season, consistently and repeatedly, and not just due to lax supervision, but with the knowledge and acceptance of management. Williams obviously knew about Drake’s presence last year, but chose to accept it, rather than intervene at the time.

In NLRB v. Katz, 369 U.S. 736, (1962), the Supreme Court held that an employer's unilateral change in a subject matter within the scope of its duty to bargain over wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment amounted to an unfair labor practice, for it is a circumvention of the duty to bargain.

With this as the backdrop, I believe that LaRoche has a sustainable grievance against the White Sox for its prohibition of his son from the clubhouse.

 

The White Sox didn't prohibit his son from the clubhouse.

 

I can't say I've followed this closely because, well, it's the fucking White Sox and Adam LaRoche. I mean it's more important than the Seattle Sounders, but arithmeticaly so, not geometrically.

Anyway, While we aren't technically in the offseason, we aren't exactly in the regular season. Was LaRcohe told the policy was in effect for the regular season only, spring training only or both. If it applied to just the regular season, he was given about a month's notice of the policy. That seems adequate.

Is the kid a special needs child?

 

That was Eugene's wording. It's still a unilateral change in policy.

 

I understand that, and I don't know if it changes the analysis at all. Maybe not. Probably not. But it's inaccurate short hand for what actually happened, which is always a favorite media sleight of hand.

 

I agree it was clumsy.

 

Wouldn't the DH spot be the equivalent of he MILF circuit?