CONFESSIONS OF A HITMAN
• AN AUDIO COMMUNICATION SYSTEM FOR CATCHERS TO GIVE SIGNS TO PITCHERS, akin to an NFL coach communicating with the quarterback. A boon to pace of play, it underwent testing in spring training and could be ready as soon as this season.
• MORE STREAMING AND GAMBLING. Apple TV+ and Peacock are streaming games this year. Several ballparks already have betting parlors, but the future there includes seatback devices or apps that allow fans to engage in proprietary betting action.
Change in baseball is met with more resistance than in other sports. But after predictable howls of protest, changes to the slide rule at second base, to the virtual outlawing of catcher collisions and to the midseason crackdown on sticky substances led to little more than a few weeks of bellyaching. To think even bigger, baseball needs to repair the distrust between owners and players the CBA negotiations exposed. When the agreement was reached to save the 162-game season, there was no joint press conference. The two sides retreated to their respective corners, casting the same wary eyes at each other.
Asked whether he expected the next five years to be better and more harmonious than the previous handful, Astros pitcher Justin Verlander says, “I hope so. That’s to be determined. We have to see how the adjustments we made play out.”
In 1968, 22-year-old Reggie Jackson hit 29 home runs for the A’s. Only three players in the American League hit more. In the wake of subsequent changes, Jackson and the game thrived. The brash slugger was at the nexus of free agency, athleticism, more offense, the DH and the f lourishing of personality. Reggie (one name was enough) personified the new game.
Jackson is 75 now. He works as an adviser to Astros owner Jim Crane. In spring training he pulled on a Houston uniform as a rare professor emeritus of the game, lending advice to players born long after he played his last game in 1987.
“What do I think of the game?” he says. “There are no baseball people in the game. They’re gone.” Jackson is careful not to say these lifers have been pushed out, but organizations no longer value them as they once did.
During CBA negotiations, players routinely took shots at Manfred. Meanwhile, from the comfort of “rebuilds,” the consecutive losing seasons of the Orioles and Tigers (five), Pirates and Royals (six), and Marlins (11) all included payrolls of less than $100 million last season.
Such is the distrust on both sides, as Jackson put it, “Now I have to watch you when you go into the kitchen when I make chocolate chip cookies.”
It is time to share the cookies instead of swiping them. Under the new CBA, active players for the first time will sit on the Competition Committee, which was established in 2017. This year, the committee will consist of four current players, six Mlb-appointed members and one umpire. It’s a start. Changes are coming. But changes succeed only with trust.