In trying to break each other in MLB negotiations, owners and players broke baseball
For the baseball fan who can’t get enough of the sport, no matter its shortcomings, Tuesday was a great day.
This kind of fan looks past all that has gone on over the past month and doesn’t outwardly worry about the potential peril that lies ahead, not only in the abbreviated 2020 MLB season but future seasons as well.
Baseball needs more fans like this, but they might be the only fans the sport has at this point.
Baseball currently has the face only a die-hard could love. Or a mother. Or maybe a boxing cut man.
The 30 team owners and the hundreds of players have left baseball bloodied, bruised and scarred. And these are wounds that won’t quickly heal.
Their public spat over how to cut up billions of dollars, while around 40 million Americans have zero dollars to cut up, cost them fans.
The sport will likely take a hit from some of the fans who already watch Major League Baseball as well as the new ones they could have cultivated during the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead of getting ready to start the season July 4 weekend — talk about symbolism — only on June 23 did the owners and players decide there would be a season
The Texas Rangers will conduct spring training 2.0 at Globe Life Field, with players reporting by July 1.
The season, all 60 games of it, will begin July 23 or July 24. The NBA and NHL are planning to rev up a few days later after peacefully agreeing to resume their seasons.
Now, some MLB players might opt out of playing in this shortened season so that they don’t hurt their value as they head into free agency in the offseason.
Baseball’s infighting blew up the chance for the league to have nearly a month as the only show in town. It could have helped divert the country’s attention away from a pandemic and helped re-establish baseball as America’s Pastime.
The faces of the sport — like established stars Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper and Francisco Lindor, and maybe newcomers Ronald Acuna Jr., Juan Soto, Pete Alonso and Joey Gallo — would have been on full display.
Instead, the face of baseball became commissioner Rob Manfred, who does the owners’ bidding, and maybe the Twitter avatar of right-hander Trevor Bauer.
One of Bauer’s latest 280-word missives questioned, complete with two of those casting-doubt emojis, all the players surrendered by voting against the owners’ final proposal simply for the chance to file a grievance that might net them nothing but more scorn from ownership.
The grievance could be worth close to $1 billion, so perhaps the players saw the risk of nixing last-minute concessions from the owners as being worth the reward.
The players left it to Manfred to set the schedule, which he did under the rights granted to him in a March 26 agreement that gave players full service time, $170 million in salary advance, and, they believe, the right to receive their full pro-rated salary.
That was the hill they chose to die on.
But let’s not give the owners a pass, either.
According to Manfred, who didn’t show his work to the players, owners are facing an estimated $4 billion in losses. That’s a staggering number, but not as staggering when considering that MLB made $10.7 billion last season and that franchise values have risen sharply in recent years.
The owners, all of them wealthier than any player, haven’t been lining up at food banks. And the way they negotiated, with weak offer after weak offer, galvanized the union to at least the point where it would vote 33-5 against management’s last-ditch offer.
The owners, again all of them wealthier than any player, tried to paint the players as greedy and have no problem sending them into harm’s way to darn those gaping holes in the owners’ pockets.
This comes on top of owners slashing the amateur draft from 40 rounds to five, scheming to contract 40 teams from the minor leagues, and, oh yeah, dropping the average salary over the past two seasons while bringing in record revenues.
If the owners were hoping to create division in the union heading toward the end of the current basic agreement, they did the opposite. And they could end up paying dearly if a grievance goes against them.
Great work, everyone.
But at least there’s going to be baseball, for the fans who actually still care.
This story was originally published June 23, 2020 at 6:06 PM.
