Posted on 06/17/2020 8:04:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Short-sighted negotiations between Major League Baseball owners and players are sabotaging the chance for a renaissance that the game desperately needs.
Each passing day without Major League Baseball stands as a stain on America’s national pastime and represents a sad failure to capitalize on a golden opportunity for the game and the country. Today, we should be distracted from our work, glued to our televisions, computers, or smartphones watching otherwise meaningless spring training games with greater interest than ever before, in anticipation of the return to normalcy of the daily drama of baseball.
At a minimum, our ailing nation could use the entertainment of skills competitions, or a reprised “home run derby” series. Baseball in any form, that most cherished spring-fall companion, would provide a needed respite from the mundane of the everyday grind that has only been accentuated by the effects of the Chinese coronavirus.
Instead, MLB’s folly is coming into clear view as June comes and goes. Players, owners, and the league remain unable to come to terms on an agreement to play ball while engaging in an ugly, short-sighted, and ultimately damaging public confrontation.
Historically, if you are a fan of virtually any team save for the New York Yankees or St. Louis Cardinals — and especially like me if you stay true to the New York Mets orange and blue — June marks the transition of a once-promising season to a long, hot summer of pain, suffering, and humiliation.
For this Mets fan, my mid-month birthday stands as a milestone of franchise futility — a reminder that it has been more than three decades since a summer in which a world championship club graced the meadows of Flushing, the remarkable exploits of which I never got to witness. Yet even if you are as jaded and tormented a fan as I am, I suspect you, like me, would give anything right now to once again have your hopes dashed, and heartbroken.
This year, even the most spoiled of fans, blessed with allegiances to the winningest of franchises, face agony. Through natural disasters, civil strife, economic calamity, and world wars, baseball has always marched on as a joyous diversion. No matter what was happening in your life or the world, you could always count on an unscripted three hours each night that would guarantee you something you had never seen before — one installment of 162, comprising the glorious narrative arc that is a Major League Baseball season.
Today, baseball stands still. It’s worse than no joy in Mudville. There’s no Mudville at all.
With each passing week, the prospects of anything resembling a season fades. At this point, even the best we could hope for is a rump schedule. The American pastime is blowing a golden opportunity to stand as the only game in town, in the process bringing a semblance of normalcy back to the nation, and positioning itself for a renaissance.
For years, even as revenues have risen, many have feared, with good reason, that baseball was dying. “The game is too long,” they say, and people’s attention spans “too short.” Some argue advanced analytics have not only generated infinite pitching changes — which, in turn, lead to drawn-out games — but replaced the humanity of the sport with something more automated and artificial. This is to say nothing of the scandals, including the one poised to loom over this season.
But for all of the game’s problems, some real and some perceived, at a time the country craves sports, that baseball could have led the nationwide restart should have been too enticing a chance to pass up. Baseball has a unique opportunity to reward loyal fans and create scores of new ones; to showcase its richness, history, and electrifying talent; to unite our beleaguered states over something that transcends our differences. We should have been preparing to celebrate July 4 with Opening Day.
Instead, what we are seeing in the acrimonious back-and-forth between the players, the owners, and MLB in the early stages of a long-term labor dispute. Make no mistake, the current baseball standstill persists because it represents the opening round of negotiations concerning the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that governs the game, slated to expire after the 2021 season.
The gist of the dispute comes down to this: Given a truncated schedule, played in front of fewer fans than ever before, and thus where revenues and profits are going to absolutely crater, how should players and owners split the pot of substantially reduced money? There is more to it than this, of course, as there were many areas of disagreement between players and owners that had been bubbling to the surface in recent years. The current standstill represents a crescendo to the conflict that’s been a long time coming.
All sides should realize the potential benefits gained for everyone involved by coming to some form of ceasefire far outweigh the costs of butchering this season. Instead, the billionaire owners, super agents, high-flying lawyers, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicists who run the game are imprudently throwing away — among other things — untold future billions of dollars by forestalling or even postponing this season.
Baseball could be growing goodwill that would accrue to the benefit of everyone involved in it by playing today. Millions of people could be being introduced to the elation of walk-off home runs, the curiosities of lineup construction and bullpen management, and the high drama of pennant races. There has long been talk of the fact that the game has not done enough to promote its stars, yet there is infinite young, exceptional talent sitting idle, all of whom could be getting unprecedented national attention.
Although purists like myself would abjure any of the numerous tweaks to the game that have been bandied about, we would have been content to see them tried, only to crash and burn in a shortened season.
Instead, baseball is tottering when it has every chance to thrive and squandering a rare chance to reinvigorate the game. It’s a shame for the sport, and more importantly for the country. And for those long-suffering fans awaiting a championship, like the Brooklyn Dodgers faithful of yesteryear would say, this may well be the cruelest “Wait ‘til next year!”
Vastly overpaid ballplayers crying about money and games played while millions are still out of work.
Greedy players and greedy owners can’t seem to reach an agreement. They would have the sports world all to themselves (except for golf and European soccer). And thus are missing a great opportunity.
The Cleveland Browns taught me a valuable lesson. Professional sports is a business, nothing more, nothing less. In general, the people associated with a professional sports franchise don’t care about you, or your city. They care about taking care of themselves. I have no problem with that.
But, when the teams come crying to the fans asking for support and loyalty, remember, it’s like the makers of Tide, or Kleenex asking for your loyalty and support. To heck with that, produce a good product, I may watch, I may not.
And when they come, hat in hand asking the taxpayers to build them a structure so they can make huge piles of cash, I’d say get lost.
Reality.
Too greedy and way too detached from their dwindling fan base.
I gave up on baseball during the strike-shortened season (’95 or so?). I did not intentionally walk away, but during the long layoff, I found I could do without it and moved on. I did not come back to it until 5 or 6 years ago. This year is shaping up to be the beginning of another period in which I lose interest in baseball (hell, pretty much all sports).
It’s amazing to me how petty and stupid they’re all being. For one thing the agreement they made at shut down means they could just turn things on with no additional negotiations. But of course the MLBPA is generally considered the most powerful union in sports. And they like to prove that by #$%^ing the bed periodically. The owners went in for more negotiations, and the PA $#%^ the bed. They could have been playing in May. They could have been national heroes. Nope.
If an NFL season is shortened from 16 to 12 games, the only thing the fans notice is that there are four fewer weeks of football. But if an MLB season is shorted to 50, 100 or even 140 (out of 162) games, then it forever carries a black mark in the eyes of fans because none of the statistical achievements really mean anything in a historical context.
This year is shaping up to be the beginning of another period in which I lose interest in baseball (hell, pretty much all sports).
They sure are. They could be the only game in town right now - a massive roll out on July 4 could have generated a lot of excitement and good feeling for the country. But the billionaires and millionaires can’t figure it out.
Now comes Dr. Fauci’s recommendation to baseball about the timing of safely wrapping up their season. My bet right now, no baseball.
Fine by me. There’s plenty on Netflix and Hulu to watch.
I’ve heard one major issue is that they planned to play in empty stadiums. With no ticket sales revenue, the owners are going to take a huge financial bath this season.
Sad to say the owners will come out ahead financially if there is no 2020 season at all.
Then on the other hand the players, some of whom make millions of dollars in a season, are balking at perhaps getting only a high six figure or low million dollar payday for a short season.
Ideally both sides would realize that 2020 is going to be a tough season for everyone, and make Financial sacrifices in 2020 for the good of the game in 2021 and beyond.
After the strike-shortened 1994 season I swore I would never support MLB again. I’ve done a good job over the years. I’ve attended a total of four MLB games since then — all of them in the last 15 years. Two of them were company events, and one of them was a group event in another city as part of a multi-day conference. My only moment of weakness (where I went out and paid for tickets out of my own pocket) came a few years ago when I was dating a girl who was a hard-core baseball fan. :-)
Like usual by you Kaslin good post however you could have simple said Baseball,Short-sighted on both sides and screwing up a grand opportunity.
I'm not so sure about that. I've been under the impression that MLB is under tremendous pressure to put SOMETHING on the field this season because the financial/legal repercussions they'd face under their TV contracts would be devastating.
And I have no interest in defending the players here, but the public statement from one of them on this mess made a lot of sense. He was really talking about the blatant inconsistency in playing games under modified conditions. He said (I'm paraphrasing): "If it isn't safe enough to play with fans in the stands, then how is it safe to play at all?"
> when the teams come crying to the fans asking for support and loyalty, remember, it’s like the makers of Tide, or Kleenex asking for your loyalty and support <
Very well said. I like a good football game as much as the next guy. And sometimes a friend of mine will tell me, “You gotta support your team!”
To that I always reply: “Why?” Oh, the blank looks I get!
Oh, I'll get caught up on projects around the house that I keep putting off. I can watch more movies from my vast Blu-ray and DVD collection, watch more operas, etc.
When you really think about it in depth, sports are really stupid. I try not to dwell on the fact that when we watch a sport, we are watching people do something that has no practical application in life. "Wow, that guy can really throw a ball through a hoop!", etc. It takes some imagination on the fan's part to see these trivial talents as somehow important and a source of regional pride.
The fun of sports is forgetting unimportant stuff and getting wrapped up in something unimportant. Once too much reality intrudes (labor contracts, BLM, etc) it ceases to be a diversion and becomes an annoyance.
As an old friend told me, professional sports is like professional sex. There is no love involved, and it is all about the money.
Geez Ben: How did we ever get along when there were but 16 teams and none west of the Mississippi? When there was damned little spring training, when the post season was no greater than seven games? When parks held maybe 25,000 at most (less the House that Ruth built). When there was no such thing as an NBA. When pro-football was an Eastern joke. Somehow America survived. Perhaps because we paid more attention to our family than to our sports team?
There will be no sports in the Brave New World, comrade.
Only labor and shortage, unending.
“Each passing day without Major League Baseball stands as a stain on America’s national pastime and represents a sad failure to capitalize on a golden opportunity for the game and the country.”
Well... while the romanticism is appreciated, this is not our daddies’ America anymore. Any return to pro sports will be so heavily laced with wokeness about “racism,” it’ll be insufferable.
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