MLB lockout has inflicted daily long-term damage
JUPITER, Fla. – There was no Twitter during the 1994-95 MLB strike that resulted in the cancellation of the World Series.
The internet wasn’t around during baseball’s first seven work stoppages.
These days you don’t need a laptop, iPad or cellphone to gauge the level of anger spewing during baseball’s lockout.
There isn’t a fan, player, owner, executive or peanut salesman who isn’t absolutely furious.
There is not a single issue that can’t be compromised on during these labor negotiations.
The owners are not asking for a hard salary cap. The players are not asking for earlier free agency.
It’s just a matter of splitting up money in a $10.7 billion industry, this time primarily to take care of young players, most of whom make close to baseball’s minimum salary.
Three months passed, a dozen negotiations took place and there barely was any progress to save the start of the regular season.
At press time, the sides appeared to making progress toward a new collective bargaining agreement and had agreed on a 12-team postseason. The sides still had to finalize luxury tax thresholds.
Everyone, though, has paid the price.
“This isn’t millionaires vs. billionaires,” Dodgers ace Walker Buehler tweeted, before later deleting it. “This is workers vs. owners. The value is subjective. We are EXTREMELY lucky to do what we do but the numbers don’t line up. I appreciate the fans getting where we are coming from. Truly.”
Fans will have at least two weeks of spring training wiped off the books – perhaps a shortened regular season too – and are asking themselves if they should remain emotionally invested
in the sport.
“This is just terrible,” one former MLB slugger said in a text message. “It just doesn’t make any sense.
“No one really comes out a winner by this. The cost is serious damage to the greatest pastime in American sports.”
Well, make that America’s former greatest sports pastime.
Let’s be honest, if you surveyed the casual sports fan, most wouldn’t have even been aware there was a baseball lockout until the day after the Super Bowl.
Wait, what do you mean spring training is delayed?
Major League Baseball can’t afford to delay the start of the season. It would be catastrophic to see even a week of games canceled.
This time, there is no Cal Ripken Jr. consecutive games playing streak to command
our attention.
There is no Mark McGwireSammy Sosa home run chase to captivate the country.
Who’s going to save it this time?
“This already looks bad,” former Blue Jays All-Star outfielder Vernon Wells said on the Toronto-based “Deep Left Field” podcast. “The NHL is doing well. The NFL just probably had its greatest postseason ever. The NBA has constantly done such a great job of marketing its players and the game being so entertaining that baseball (had) already taken a step back.
“Now you add this on, we’re falling back even more.”
Ticket sales are down throughout the industry thanks to the lockout, with the Red Sox reporting 30% decline in ticket sales this winter.
It’s hardly as if fans are going to storm the gates once the lockout is over. Attendance has been down the past four years.
Even with most teams starting spring training camps with their minor leaguers, the fans have been stuck outside the gates, unable to enter the back fields and watch.
One fan took his family down from Colorado after being told that minor league workouts would be open, only to find them all closed.
“All of the out-of-state fans I’ve spoken to in Phoenix, my family included,” he said, “feel left in the dark. And most of all, misled.”
Fans already are growing awfully wary about the product, particularly the young audience, and a shortened season would infuriate the baseball purists.
The best public relations move MLB can make, according to one All-Star, is to eliminate blackouts for a season and provide viewers a free MLB.TV subscription considering so many disputes between regional networks and the carrier. There still are viewers in Orange County, California, for instance, who can’t get Dodgers games, and there are folks in Iowa who are blacked out from six MLB teams.
And remember, even when the lockout ends, the sport is going to be suffocated in bitterness, resentment and anger.
Players will rip management for the lockout. Players like Nick Anderson of the Rays will be filling notebooks talking about how he actually had to pitch in a Tampa parking lot since he couldn’t use the team facilities. Houston starter Lance McCullers already has publicly said he’s behind schedule in his recovery from a forearm strain because he was unable to speak with the Astros medical team.
“The people I would usually rely on for the rehab, I haven’t been able to speak to or communicate with,” McCullers said to a Houston sportscaster. “It’s been a little difficult, I’m not going to lie . ... It’s frustrating for me because, ultimately, I’m the one who suffers and the fans are the one who suffers while we argue away.”
There also are about 200 unemployed major league free agents. You think more than a handful will actually get what they believe will be a fair deal? Guys are going to be scrambling to find takers; others will be forced to retire. There will be such precious little time before the start of the season that players won’t afford to be patient in negotiations.
MLB will need all of the goodwill it can muster, and lifting the blackouts just for one season, or giving fans free MLB.TV, might be good business.
Then again, considering the game’s defects these days, maybe it’s better to limit that audience to prevent fans from realizing just how little they’re missing.
“Play ball” sounds more like a threat heading into the 2022 season.