Quid Pro Quo?

The one dissenter to the Floyd-trade conspiracy theorems, Rob Neyer, points out that, "[I]f Selig fixed the sale of the Red Sox, wouldn't it be the Sox who owe Selig a favor, rather than the other way around?"

Doug Pappas' article on John Henry counters this argument. Pappas asserts that John Henry with his Sox heading towards the playoffs and making handfuls of money is being courted: "The hard-line position isn't in the best interest of the high-revenue, high-payroll Red Sox team." Therefore, Selig and his cadre of owners still need to curry favor with Henry, giving him Cliff Floyd for practically free can't hurt.

One other Pappas quote puzzles me:

Unlike 1994, the parties aren't that far apart. The owners and players have all but agreed on reforms to the amateur draft which will save the owners millions of dollars. They're within $70 million of one another on a revenue-sharing formula, and while the players oppose the owners' demand for a 50% "luxury tax" on payrolls over $98 milllion, they accepted a temporary 35% luxury tax in the last labor agreement. A reasonable compromise to avoid a strike is still possible.

What puzzles me is that ESPN has been running a headline/hyperlink on its baseball page entitled Players, owners still divided on most key issues all week. Maybe it's explained by another Pappas quote: "But Bud and his buddies may not want a reasonable compromise..." Are ESPN and ABC, its parent company, allowing themselves to act as propagandists for the owners willfully or unknowingly? Or is Pappas' point of view too extreme and too biased against the owners? After reading the information on both sites, I would tend to believe Pappas-he is more forthcoming with the facts and I don't think he has a monetary stake in the outcome.