McCaffery: Fan interest in baseball will return
Empty ballparks hurt passion, but fans will welcome baseball back
The shorter season will be different. But it will be baseball. And people will watch the games.
As it should have been all along, predictably if a little late, the one game that has always signaled rebirth will be the first of the major American sports to return after a four-month national overreaction to a virus. Baseball.
Finally.
Though basketball and hockey will not be far behind, baseball will be the first to formally reopen its training camps, and baseball will be the first to be televised, beginning around July 24. The regular season will be 60 games, or roughly how much time Roman Quinn typically requires to recover from a muscle pull. The rules will be a little different, if not outright nonsensical, with every extra half-inning starting with a runner on second base. Fans will not be permitted on site, at least until the grownups-in-charge allow them to borrow the car keys and stay out past 11. Even then, they will be shamed into wearing disguises.
So, it will be different. But it will be baseball. And people will watch the games on TV, listen to them on the radio, and demand that the manager be fired whenever a losing streak reaches three. It’s what sports fans do in the summer.
At first, there will be the easy and predictable resentment. For that, Baseball with a capital B has itself to blame.
Had the season been delayed simply out of health concerns, even those of the heavy-handed
variety, many would have accepted the sincerity of that caution; they would have understood that the season was being punctured not because of greed, but by an act of nature.
Baseball wouldn’t have it that way, though. Nope. It had to tack on an additional fortnight of delay as the players and owners bickered over you-knowwhat. It was almost as if they all just decided that the fans hadn’t been disrespected enough, so let’s shaving-cream-pie them before the first “play ball” grunt. Even if both sides had legitimate reasons to keep a grip on their financial interests at a time when neither asked for the circumstances, the sideshow was accurately characterized as another episode in the sport’s never-ending Millionairesvs.-Billionaires bingewatch.
One of these generations, the sport will find a capable commissioner. Yet even with Rob Manfred in charge, a settlement was reached, with the players hanging on to their full salaries, pro-rated for a 60-game tour.
With that, there was the question: Will people welcome baseball back?
With that, there was the answer: Yep.
Surely, it will be preposterous to expect the standard level of passion from any fan base forbidden to attend games. That’s a business cost, at least for this year, one the owners will have to absorb. But if there’s one thing the sports illuminati never properly grasp, it’s that fans don’t care much when games are not played. That’s because, in a calendar year, games are rarely played, anyway.
The NFL, rumored to be mildly popular, can have as many as 340 days a year without a game. The NBA and NHL will have about 275 dark nights. Even at 162 games, the playoffs and that Grapefruit League over-kill, there will be 140 days a year without baseball. If ever there was an example of how little fans care about games not being played, it was when the NHL took the entire 2005 season off, then returned in 2006, pretending it had over-slept. By the second shift of the first game, the spectators barely remembered the lost season at all.
Typically, sports fans ask themselves two questions:
One, is there a game tonight? And, two, is it on TV? If they have a third, it will be about the availability of tickets. If the answers are no, they will cut the lawn instead. It’s not a complicated relationship. If there are games, people will watch. If not, they will not rebel the next time there are games to watch.
Does baseball have other issues challenging its fan loyalty? Plenty. The games are too long, what with so many ingenious managers trying to manipulate outcomes through a mindless reliance on past performances. Oddly enough, even with all that brain power, 50 percent of the teams in any game lose. The defensive shifts have robbed the sport of some entertaining nuance. Manfred should have used the recent re-negotiation flurry to mandate that two infielders must remain on each side of second base. It would have beaten that new, extra-innings goofiness. But the commissioner only had four idle months to do something productive. No rush.
But baseball is on its way back. The fans, ever patient, deserve that. A certain percentage of critics will holler about the virus, willing to hide under their beds forever. But if there are medical issues, they can be limited by quarantining affected players for a brief time. And when has baseball ever not had players unavailable for one medical issue or another?
A 60-game season is not ideal. Managers will be tempted to pull ace pitchers after three innings, then abuse them two days later on short rest. The final stats will be vandalized with asterisks. There will be a greater likelihood of a truly average team winning the World Series.
But it is well past time for sports to return, and to do so as safely as possible. And there is baseball, clearing a path. For a while, there will be overconcern about virus tests. But the tests were a way to bring baseball back, not to continue to shut it down. They are helpful tools, not wrecking balls.
Expect some hurdles. Expect some grumbling. Expect some backup player to be fined for spitting too often. Expect the Phanatic to wear a mask. Expect a manager to mangle the new extra-inning situation.
Just get it started, already.
Batter up.