One good thing about Major League Baseball has been its propensity to create American jobs. That’s changing now, unfortunately.
MLB players often use bats made in places such as Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and New York and produced by companies such as Louisville Slugger, Marucci, and BWP. Much of the league’s other equipment is also American-made. However, some of MLB’s helmet production will soon move to China.
The move will directly eliminate 59 full-time and 10 part-time jobs from Caledonia, Minnesota, over the next 18 to 24 months and harm other local businesses by taking income that those workers pumped into the economy.
Miken Sports, the company that makes the helmets used by MLB players as well as composite softball bats, will move its production to China and Missouri, CBS News reports. Miken Sports is owned by Rawlings, the company that makes the baseballs that Major League Baseball uses in its games — and MLB is a part of the ownership group that owns Rawlings.
Baseball is an American sport, and the reason why the MLB has existed since the 19th century is that Americans love and embrace the game. While there have been efforts to grow the fan base globally in recent years, the league is what it is today because of people in America. It’s a major reason why pre-pandemic, the league made more than $10 billion in revenue in 2019. People watch the games on television, buy tickets to the games, buy the collectibles, wear the jerseys, and so on.
These Minnesota workers are a part of baseball’s American tradition. It’s a league that has historically made a lot of its equipment domestically and been a job provider in the country. Now, as if the league doesn’t chase the dollar hard enough already, it will let production go to a country that’s not only an adversary of the United States but one with human rights abuses when it comes to workers.
China already hurts American jobs in the sports industry enough with its complacency when it comes to criminals producing counterfeit memorabilia and jerseys. It hurts the small business owner on Main Street in Cooperstown, New York, when someone on the other side of the globe can sell an Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton jersey for $20 when someone in this country would do prison time for trying the same thing. Not to mention China is an adversary to Taiwan, a country that produces MLB players.
If MLB wants to boost its profit margin, cutting jobs in a small Midwestern town isn’t the way to do it. Seeking television deals in more international markets and taking steps to boost the popularity of the game in urban areas are better ways to increase revenue. The first way is a good way to receive endless criticism. The latter is a way to create more lifelong fans.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
