It's finally over. But is baseball's lockout over in time?
How much internal damage has been delivered by a protracted negotiating fistfight that caused scores of fans to hemorrhage interest and empathy as each side of the table locked horns over millions, while America's 401ks melted and gas prices soared?
What's the appetite for a better-late-than-never hug fest by those who recently jumped ship? Once baseballs start flying at spring training, will ticket-buying memories be those of elephants or a "Ted Lasso" goldfish?
In a cap tip to Simon and Garfunkel, "Where have you gone, Joe Public? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to … Jeff Passan."
The ESPN baseball insider, the most connected in the game, laid out everything from the MLB Players Association vote (26-12), increases in the competitive balance tax, minimum salaries, bonus pools for young stars yet to reach arbitration and more.
Here come 12-team postseasons, he reported. Here comes advertising on jerseys and helmets. Here comes the universal designated hitter.
And yet all anyone outside of the rooms sorting baseball's plutonium potato cared about: Here comes … baseball.
After 99 exhausting days, with a maddening amount of weeks burned with no face-to-face negotiations, baseball dropped the whole "West Side Story" act and got its own act together.
The fact they salvaged a 162-game schedule seemed laughable, if not grossly manipulative. This is the drop-dead deadline, we heard. Until the next one, the one after that and the one after that.
An avalanche of bluffs and leveraging-fueling dodges exasperated. But BASEBALL! … at least for everyone inside the game, hoping our collective cuts would be collectively soothed with the flip of a switch.
The Angels' Mike Trout, the face of baseball in waiting who never really wanted the gig, tweeted a picture of fist-pumping Tiger Woods with the hashtag #LETSGO in front of a pair of flexed biceps.
Only time will tell what the game has done to itself, or if it has done much of anything at all. Bitterness quickly will give way to initial goosebumps as a free-agent class featuring the likes of Freddie Freeman, Carlos Correa, Kris Bryant, Nick Castellanos, Nelson Cruz and more are run down with checkbooks galore.
Padres fans will wait to see if the franchise reignites chilled off-season stoves, hunting for a full-time solution in left field and a big bat as the DH greets the National League.
Could they run down the outfielder Castellanos? Is there interest and budgeting gumption to lure the ageless bat of Cruz? Would they choose to leverage the connections of new manager Bob Melvin to shuffle chess pieces and scoop up first baseman Matt Olson from his former team, the A's?
No matter what comes next, the Padres need be clear-eyed about how they use or don't use Eric Hosmer. Let him earn or lose playing time on his own terms to start the season. He deserves that.
The $20 million paycheck cannot be paralyzing, though, in terms of decisions of talent upgrades to chase.
All of it represents the kind of team-shaping decisions that could calm even the crustiest of critics. Will that square the team-fan ledger? Only time determines that sort of thing.
You wonder how acutely both sides felt the impatience of fans, sprinkled with anger that bordered dangerously close to a more harmful outcome: indifference. Baseball will get its CBA honeymoon as free agents bounce to and fro and big-league camps awaken our spring rituals.
The internet welcomed the return of baseball Thursday with open electronic arms. Trademarking the phrase "Baseball's back!" would have allowed the wise person to start rubbing social elbows with Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett.
Maybe America's capacity for forgiveness is more vast than most realize, even at a time when the country remains ridiculously divided.
In San Diego, the city and its fans will offer one of the softest landings. They've waited so long for a team with enough financial footing and potential to take them on baseball's version of a magic carpet ride.
In the absence of the NFL's Chargers, the Padres are the city's beating sports heart.
They understand Padres' ownership — Chairman Peter Seidler and critical-era architect Ron Fowler — planted the pocketbook firmly behind the promises. They've been trying to win in all the ways they know how in a market that counted pennies for far too long.
Other parts of the country? Good question. Baseball risked much with its mud fight.
Maybe we'll look back in a couple years and frame this as one of those staged standoffs at an MMA weigh-in. The TV ratings and turnstiles will provide the long-term answers.
Baseball's back. For now, that's about all we know for sure.
And maybe, if we're lucky, that's enough.
