Sport’s problems run deeper than messy shutdown

There’s a baseball clown show onstage these days, under the guise of negotiations between players and owners to play a majorleague season, and though the prospect of a complete shutdown has everyone worried, don’t misunderstand the financial bickering.

Owners will still be billionaires, players will still be millionaires. Postpandemic, whenever that blessed day comes, there will be San Francisco Giants and New York Yankees and games for people to attend or watch at home.

As the annual MLB draft begins Wednesday, there are more significant questions in play: What happens when people can’t experience the sport they love? Or when aspiring young players

run out of realistic options and turn to other careers?

You undoubtedly were appalled when A’s owner John Fisher wiped out the salaries of his minorleague players to save a relative pittance for himself. He eventually changed his mind, but true colors had been exposed, and he’s merely a poster in the gallery of disgrace. Baseball thinks there’s nothing particularly offensive about a plan that would contract 40 minorleague teams across the land. And behold the draft, cut from its usual 40 rounds to five, all for the sake of saving each of the 30 teams what amounts to a paltry figure (around $1.5 million) in their world.

Once the five rounds have concluded, undrafted players either can sign with any team for up to $20,000 — that’s their limit on all signing bonuses — or essentially take a hike. To catch a glimpse of the landscape, consider the case of Ethan Hearn, a 19yearold catcher, as reported by ESPN. Selected in the sixth round by the Cubs last year, Hearn was given a $950,000 signing bonus to turn pro instead of playing college ball. This year, without a sixth round, he’d have to settle for $930,000 less.

Getting drafted by the bigs.

That’s every kid’s dream. Imagine if this tightwad scheme had been in place over the years. Players drafted between rounds 6 and 20 included Paul Goldschmidt, Jacob deGrom, Andre Dawson, Nolan Ryan, Tim Hudson, Marcus Semien, Anthony Rizzo, Wade Boggs, Dave Parker, Fred McGriff and Dave Stewart. Out there in obscurity, drafted after the 20th round, you could find John Smoltz, Dusty Baker, Robb Nen, Sergio Romo, Rich Aurilia, Brett Butler, Keith Hernandez (42nd round) and Mike Piazza (62nd round, which existed in 1988).

Granted, a lot of those players were too talented to just give up the game, but you never know about a kid’s background, family finances or a wandering eye. In the residue of this week’s draft, the game

will lose players who had MLB star potential. After so much hard work to broaden baseball’s diversity, all those innercity programs that got underprivileged kids interested in the game, a disturbing trend is likely to escalate: promising young athletes turning to other sports.

In time, sources say, the draft will be restored to at least 20 rounds. But imagine a promising high school player pondering a long, complex road into the unknown:

OK, so he isn’t drafted. He could take that $20,000 and build his case in the minor leagues — except, wait, it’s almost certain there won’t be

any minorleague baseball this season. He looks into a scholarship for college ball, only to find programs overloaded with holdover players and those suddenly giving it a shot. There simply won’t be room for everybody, and promises will be broken.

At least the collegiate game will be thriving — or will it? At the Division I level, where football is king, spring sports are in grave danger. Staging a college football season will be a risky undertaking with a crazy imbalance (students not allowed in classrooms while football players undergo rigorous workouts), no clear sense of whether fans will be allowed in the stadiums, wildly varying statetostate stipulations from health officials, the closecontact nature of the sport, and the looming threat of a second COVID19 wave in the heart of the season.

“If you don’t have students on campus, you don’t have studentathletes on campus,” NCAA President Mark Emmert recently said via Twitter. “That doesn’t mean the school has to be up and running in the full normal model, but you have to treat the health and wellbeing of the students. If a school doesn’t reopen, then they’re not going to be playing football. It’s really that’s simple.”

How important is football? At many major colleges, the sport accounts for at least 75% of the school’s athletic revenue, primarily from ticket sales and television rights. If spring sports take a hit, or are at least temporarily eliminated, baseball will be a major casualty among Division I colleges. Furman has discarded its program, and that could become a trend if there’s no football.

Meanwhile, minorleague baseball is about to vanish for the summer. In the realm of heartbreaking scenarios, this is a crusher. Giants fans know they’ll eventually see Joey Bart, Marco Luciano and the rest of the team’s hot prospects. What about the baseballloving folks in Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina and Utah? Many miles from a bigleague stadium, they’ve fallen in love with their minorleague franchises and the whole experience: intimate settings, cheap beer and hot dogs, nights out with the kids, close connections with the players and all the wacky promotions.

The owners of these teams are by no means independently wealthy; a single lost season means zero revenue against the obligations of employees to pay, tickets to return, prepaid sponsors to satisfy, offseason expenditures to explain. Some of the more established teams will recover, but others will be sold or disbanded. It’s one thing to be disillusioned over MLB’s latest financial haggling, but quite another to realize, They’re taking away our team.

Not that anyone would notice any of this in the MLB gazebo, with caviar and cocktails about to be served, but the intangible damage is irreparable. The shuffling of papers cannot repair a shattered dream.

It’s all terribly depressing, yes, but don’t align this column with hysterical screeds about the game becoming extinct, or falling behind Ultimate Frisbee in national popularity, if the season is called off. It’s a beautiful game, the best game, but it must be freed from the shackles of greed and arrogance, and that starts at the top, with all the stubborn fools in charge of labor negotiations on both sides. Maybe it’s too late to save 2020, but let’s hope for a comprehensive housecleaning that gives voice to people who actually care. Send off the clowns.