Baseball has everything to lose if it doesn’t play
Impasse threatens World Series, long-term faith and massive big-market presence
Major League Baseball has already squandered the advantage it had on the continent’s other top professional sports, but what else could it lose if it doesn’t navigate around its current labour impasse?
Oh, just about everything. Place the blame wherever you want — greedy players, greedy owners, the myopia of both, a commissioner incapable of transcending any of it — and you have a good chance of being right. And a 100 per cent chance of being irrelevant. On Monday, commissioner Rob Manfred changed his song sheet and was no longer certain baseball would be played this year.
Forget the fact that, by prior binding agreement, the owners can bring back the game if they want. Here’s what would be lost if they don’t:
Foremost, the World Series. Last time the owners cancelled it, in 1994, it took four years and steroid ball for the overall game to recover, and a decade and a half for some franchises, including the Blue Jays. Baseball leadership acts as if losing the
World Series is like misplacing your car keys.
Continuity. Huge one. There will be no minor-league baseball this summer and, with no big league-play, the sport would be invisible in the big cities as well as the dozens of important appetite-and-tradition feeder markets. Out of sight, potentially out of mind, and an entertainment industry should never tempt discretionary-spending patrons to live without it.
Ravenous media exposure: The Yankees and Dodgers, the best two teams, squat in the continent’s two most populous regions. The Dodgers and Anthony-Rendon-boosted Angels, give baseball an L.A. chance against the Lakers, who definitely will be on TV. Pete Alonso and Aaron Judge, the game’s two most compelling young sluggers, play 10 New York miles apart. The Astros, Braves, Phillies and Cubs, are all top-10 teams in top-eight broadcast markets. The integrity-challenged Astros and Red Sox, are there for months worth of daily national ridicule, which will dilute by 2021.
Outlier full resumés: Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw and the declining Albert Pujols are generational players and every generation of fans wants its own stars to have a shot to be among best of all-time as an I-was-there life marker. Less chance of that with a full lost season.
Institutional trust: Although now trailing football as America’s Game, baseball is still America’s Healing Game. Babe Ruth helped the country through the last great plague and an economic malaise; FDR asked baseball to continue as a rallying force during the Second World War; George W. Bush’s ceremonial World Series pitch at Yankee Stadium relit normality after 9/11. But, with the spirit-draining pandemic and economic collapse all around, baseball would callously shrug off that mantel of unity? It would never wear it again.
A severely shortened regular season would also be costly, underscoring that owners don’t really understand what they sell — persistent local availability — and leading to horrific long-term changes. Baseball reaps nearly $800 million in post-season TV money, but long-term dailiness in every market sets up that playoff dough.
If baseball isn’t played and you’re still looking to accuse, always look at the owners. When baseball blew its chance to be the only big sport on television every night this summer, there was balanced culpability between players and owners but, at this stage, the blame ball sits right in the pocket of the owners’ glove.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator who covered the Toronto Blue Jays throughout their glory years and was a 23-year voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com