Major League Soccer, not baseball, to be first major pro league back as MLB keeps fighting
Judging by the back-and-forth between owners and players, the following likely isn’t rock bottom in the process of attempting to stage a 2020 MLB season, though maybe it should be:
Major League Soccer has an agreement with its players and will open the season July 8.
Soccer, a sport that remains an acquired taste for many sports fans in the United States, has beaten baseball to the punch in two ways: The MLS is the third major professional sports league to announce its plan to return amid the coronavirus pandemic, joining the NHL and NBA, and it will be the first one to hold competitive play.
Baseball had that chance, originally calling for a realistic and symbolic return on the Fourth of July weekend. Thrusting baseball back into the hot-dogs-and-apple-pie equation for an eager, sports-starved audience was perfect.
Too perfect, as it has turned out.
An early-July start is no longer feasible with no agreement on how to spread the money around, and the scoffed-at 50-game season threatened last week by the owners is now looking like the best bet for baseball.
The MLB Players Association sent another proposal Wednesday morning to the 30 team owners, calling for an 89-game season at full pro-rated salaries, an expanded postseason, a relatively small $50 million postseason pool to the players, and even the possibility of an All-Star Game and Home Run Derby after the World Series.
The owners, though, were expected to reject the offer as they remain committed to not paying full pro-rated salaries unless the season is around 50 games, or possibly even 48. The owners say they can’t afford to pay players the rate they previously agreed to pay them.
Oh, and those players are the ones who will be making the owners whatever money they can salvage from an abbreviated season and potentially putting themselves and their families at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19.
Commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday night that baseball will be played in 2020. The owners plan to extend a counter-proposal that will move more toward the players’ desires, Manfred said, but he opes they will budge on their insistence of receiving their full pro-rated salaries.
If they don’t, Manfred will impose the shortened season.
MLS, meanwhile, will ship its players and 26 teams to the ESPN World Sports of Complex at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., where the NBA will also be returning to action July 31 with 22 teams.
The National Women’s Soccer League has a plan that would make it the first pro league to return, with its season to resume June 27.
MLS will hold a month-long tournament featuring a group stage followed by knockout rounds, and the regular season will continue after the tournament. Players will be tested before they leave for Florida, once they arrive in Florida, every other day for the first two weeks, and then before each match.
Baseball’s owners and players aren’t even in complete agreement on a health plan, though ice or a cold compress might help with the black eye they are giving their sport right now.
The gut punch of a 50-game season or no season at all will take much more treament than ice. As things stand now, 50 games and a PR disaster may be the best bet for baseball in 2020.
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 11:43 AM.
