The new baseball CBA became publicly available on Friday, and many people are focusing on various international plans, spring training proposals, and what is or is not fair game when it comes to using statistics in arbitration hearings.
The new MLB CBA has a very important clause about toilet paper
Seems like this should be obvious, and yet here it is in ink.
But there’s one passage that is particularly humorous, mostly because it seems like the clauses it includes should be more than obvious for any ball club in 2017. Yet, it exists. Because apparently somebody had to be told.
The clause, in full, says:
Clubs shall ensure that home and visiting clubhouses are fully stocked with grooming items (e.g. soaps, shaving, hair products, deodorant, etc.), toiletries (e.g. toilet paper, hand wipes, wet wipes), towels and washcloths (replaced annually), and a safe or lockbox for valuables.
The “safe or lockbox” portion makes the most sense to include, as not all ballparks may have them built in for players or readily available for visiting teams.
As far as everything besides that though...is there a baseball team that wasn’t providing toilet paper and towels? Or replacing their towels at a decent rate (especially after 162 games of wear and tear)?
It’s apparently important to have this in the CBA since parts of it weren’t happening. However, it does provide the opportunity to imagine how this could play out down the road.
A player getting reprimanded for tucking away some of the hair products for his own use and trying to argue that they were specifically provided under the CBA? A team being publicly called out for not having towels and hand wipes in the locker room at all times?
This could have ramifications (it probably won’t) that ripple far and wide (they won’t). But it is funny to think that someone had to figure out how to incorporate “please put toilet paper in the bathrooms” into a pile of legalese that affects the entire league.
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