MLB surely wears black hats in this stalemate

To average baseball fans, it’s nearly impossible to sort which motion-picture cowboy wears the white or black hat when it comes to laborrelations shootouts between owners and players.

All most care about is clearing away the negotiating rubble and chilling the spring training beer.

This time, the hat assignments seem clear. MLB owners need to dig in and show they truly care about the sport and the fans propping it up by moving to end a months-long work stoppage in the next week.

They are the ones who locked out players for the first time since 1990. They’re the ones who have won more of the labor scuffles in recent decades. They’re the ones with average franchise values, according to Forbes and Sportico, ranging from $1.9-2.2 billion.

They’re the ones with the ultimate power to put baseball back on its cleats again.

The gap on core economic issues, particularly the competitive balance tax, is roughly the distance between Mission Beach and Mumbai.

“I see missing games as a disastrous outcome for this industry,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said.

So, why do the owners Manfred represents seem as inflexible as an octogenarian? The players’ union, in a recent example, tinkered with an arbitration proposal to inch closer to the other side of the table.

A Thursday meeting between the groups lasted all of 15 minutes. They’ve met just a half-dozen times, according to USA Today, in an owner-imposed lockout that eclipses 80 days this weekend.

A statement Friday from MLB said spring training must be pushed back until at least March 5. The alarm bell for disastrous, in Manfred’s mind, rings around

Feb. 28.

“All 30 clubs are unified in their strong desire to bring players back to the field and fans back to the stands,” the statement read, in part.

Strong desire? Do actions come close to matching those words, when you consider meetings that last as long as half a “Seinfeld” episode?

If those words do mean something beyond bargaining-table banter, make a real statement rather than issuing hollow ones. End the lockout. “MLB announced today that it ‘must’ postpone the start of spring training games. This is false,” the MLB Players Association said in a statement of its own. “Nothing requires the league to delay the start of spring training, much like nothing required the league’s decision to implement the lockout in the first place.”

Baseball needs to miss games about as much as TV viewers of the Olympics need more curling coverage.

The pandemic gutted the 2020 season, which covered just 60 games. In many markets, 2021 started with limited attendance as even more money sat unclaimed. Now, as owners hold the keys to the stadium gate, there could be a wholly avoidable surrender of even more as the country craves normalcy.

You wonder if owners truly understand the bigger picture, in terms of stewardship of a game already bruised purple over pace of play and offensive approaches that have caused home runs and strikeouts to skyrocket. The beauty of the game between those polar outcomes has been ravaged.

The annual hot stove — which whips fans into a lather, leading them to the ticket booth — has grown cold to the touch.

Instead of swallowing some win-at-all-costs pride for the betterment of all involved, we slog along, risking that uncertainty becomes poisoned to the point of indifference.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks perilously close to the regular season.

Minimum salaries for MLB players are the lowest of the core-four professional leagues, by a wide margin. You can make arguments about roster sizes, expected career length and the like, but $570,500 is the lowest and is locked in, for most, for the first three seasons in the league.

Most fans hardly feel sorry for anyone making that type of money, but it’s all about scale and scope. The world of professional sports involves millionaires bargaining with billionaires. The reason to sort solutions as quickly as possible — and sort out which side needs to step up soonest and most — is because it impacts when, how and if the games we care about are played.

And still, the thumbtwiddling optics continue.

The health of the game should be paramount at the time and place we find ourselves, rather than a bit more fattening of wallets. As March nears, though, the leverage tango dances on. Disastrous?

Then do something about it, while there’s still time to grab the right hat.