MLB threatens itself with long-term damage
Just before casinos closed in March, I would have bet a significant sum on MLB’s playing at least half the season.
One can’t even get odds on that now.
We have reached the point when every day without a plan for the 2020 baseball season means another game in the 2020 season that won’t be played. Half a season is off the table.
MLB owners’ latest proposal for baseball this year called for just 76 games. That plan drew overwhelmingly negative reviews from players, who last week threw out a 114-game plan that the owners were not about to accept and countered with an 89-game proposal Tuesday.
One would think the parties that be could have forged a workable agreement in the three months since the league closed spring training facilities due to the novel coronavirus.
In failing to come together, they are close to doing more damage to the game than the global pandemic.
We’re in mid-June and have no idea when or if baseball will be played. Instead of looking forward
to the season, fans are dreading what might come.
I say we get our complaining in now, so that, if we’re lucky, we can squeeze a little joy out of whatever season we do get.
A Fourth of July start and a relative sprint to the finish of a half-season of MLB games could have been exciting. That idea had a June 1 deadline.
For a sport that posted a record $10.7 billion in revenue last year, MLB is blowing it.
As you could imagine, the issue is money. How to split it.
Players want to earn a simple prorated salary, meaning they would be paid for the number of games they manage to play.
Sounds reasonable enough. But owners tend to choose profitable over reasonable.
They would prefer to pay play
ers less than their contracts call for on a prorated basis, in some cases a lot less.
Neither side has shown any sign of capitulating to the other.
Thus, worries about whether there will be an MLB season have moved along the spectrum from “much ado about nothing” to “they might actually blow off the season.”
The NBA, which had its most important part of the season put in mothballs, has a real plan to bring basketball back. The NHL is ready to go with hockey.
The NFL, fortunate that the coronavirus pandemic hit during its offseason, has hardly slowed down, with only certain offseason activities affected.
But MLB, which was a couple of weeks from opening day when it decided to shut down, has no idea when or how its season will resume.
I still believe something will be worked out, but it will be a pitiful mess of a season at best, especially if commissioner Rob Manfred imposes a 50-game schedule.
While “every game matters” would carry hard truth for the first time, it would also render the season a farce. This isn’t college football.
And not playing at all this year would be worse for the sport than
the strike-shortened 1994 season.
It took 10 seasons before attendance returned to the pre-strike level, and some fans have never felt the same way about the game.
This is not a good time for MLB to test its status on the American sports landscape.
There are a couple generations that have never seen a MLB work stoppage. Those generations are lukewarm to the sport anyway. Take it away, and they might not miss it.
After averaging more than 30,000 per game for 14 straight years, MLB has suffered an attendance driop in each of the last two seasons. Experts are advising against going to crowded stadiums for the foreseeable future.
Already, baseball has fallen behind basketball as America’s second favorite professional sport — the NFL overtook America’s pastime in the 1970s — and soccer is gaining on it for third place.
Not having a season would do more damage than not having an end to one, which was the case with the cancellation of the playoffs and the World Series in ’94.
It would be unnecessary, selfinflicted damage added onto COVID-19.
The owners will blame the players; the players will blame the owners. The fans will endure the punishment.