As usual, it's baseball fans who lose the most as MLB lockout continues
New York Yankee fans waiting for autographs from the playing during spring training in Tampa, FL Sunday Feb. 16, 2020 Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the mission statement of Major League Baseball involves, well, actually playing baseball.
Friday was one of those occasions.
Because with the ease of pressing "send" on an email, a week’s worth of spring training games was erased from the calendar. Poof. Just like that.
To the owners, the group that signed off on Rob Manfred’s lockout, no big deal, right? The attendance for exhibition games is a pittance compared to the regular season, the TV value negligible for the vast majority of clubs.
As for the players, their salaries don’t kick in until Opening Day anyway, so what were they sacrificing? Maybe a half-dozen at-bats for the regulars, a one-inning tune-up for pitchers.
From a purely rational standpoint, I won’t disagree that playing 30-plus practice games in spring training every year feels ridiculously long. Torching seven of them doesn’t seem like a huge loss.
Unless, of course, you bought tickets to those games. Along with a plane reservation, a hotel room, a rental car, etc.
This coming week also is school vacation, which typically allows for families to head to Florida or Arizona, watch their teams up close during workouts, perhaps get a few autographs and then attend the spring training openers next Saturday and Sunday before flying home.
Not this year.
After two COVID-altered springs, knocked off their usual routines by a once-in-a-century pandemic, this February/March represented the next chance to deliver baseball to the people who cherish it the most.
The fans wait all winter for a glimpse of Jacob deGrom merely playing catch in the warm sunshine or Aaron Judge swatting BP shots onto Dale Mabry Highway. The past two years, they’ve endured the mental and physical traumas inflicted by COVID-19, so to say the baseball-loving population is craving the game would be an understatement.
But now they won’t be getting it. And why? Because of the very people in charge of what is supposed to be the national pastime. After everything the fans already have been through, what a kick in the teeth that is.
Technically speaking, Manfred’s lockout is directly responsible for pushing back the spring training openers from Feb. 26 to March 5 "at the earliest," according to Friday’s emailed statement. Management’s decision to shut down the sport when the previous CBA expired, at midnight Dec. 1, was a labor strategy designed to give the owners leverage in negotiating the next deal, a detail the union wanted to clarify Friday with is own response.
"MLB announced that it ‘must’ postpone the start of spring training games," the Players Association said in Friday’s statement. "That is false."
The lockout went into effect more than 2 1⁄2 months ago, most of which was spent in radio silence between MLB and the Players Association. There have been a total of six face-to-face meetings, the majority of which didn’t last the length of a few innings. Thursday’s session in midtown Manhattan was over in 15 minutes. As the Mets’ Luis Guillorme pointed out on Twitter, he’s had longer at-bats.
And yes, we understand that negotiations are most effective on a deadline. But we’re starting to wonder if the two sides are too dug in right now to yield to any such pressure.
Manfred told the union this past week that they would need an agreement by Feb. 28 for Opening Day to go off as scheduled on March 31, yet another example of management trying to box in the players, as the lockout was intended to accomplish.
The endgame here, however, is not to preserve the regular season at all costs. It’s for each side to secure what it believes to be the most favorable economic conditions for the next five years. Can that be hammered out in a week’s time after wasting nearly three months?
Given the acrimony that exists between MLB and the Players Association, it’s really not about the number of days left. This seems to hinge on making the opposite seat at the table blink first. Who can stomach the financial hit of a work stoppage longer?
As you might expect, each side believes the other is willing to sacrifice regular-season games to accomplish its goals, and if that’s true, the Feb. 28 deadline is worthless.
MLB pledged Friday to meet every day this week — the sessions are moving from Manhattan to Jupiter, Florida — with members of the owners’ bargaining committee flying in to participate (that includes the Yankees’ Hal Steinbrenner).
That certainly gives the appearance of urgency, and we’ll soon see how legitimate it is.
The two sides remain miles apart on a number of core economic issues, namely the Competitive Balance Tax and how to fairly compensate younger players. Manfred insists the CBT is critically important to the owners, who as a group want to curb "runaway spending," while the players are adamant about fighting any steep penalties that would turn the tax into a thinly disguised salary cap.
As for paying pre-arbitration players, the union actually upped its bonus-pool request to $115 million from $100M this past week. The owners’ best offer to date? A fraction of that: $15 million.
For now, these are the only games baseball is interested in playing. And it’s the fans who keep losing.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
