As we approach the end of the third month of Major League Baseball’s lockout of its players, we also head towards the first moment of actual reckoning.
Up until this point, the lockout has merely been a nuisance for die-hard fans — the ones who actually follow baseball in the dark winter months.
Sadly — or perhaps fortunately in this case for the supposed shepherds of the sport — those ranks have been dwindling.
For everyone else, for the casual fans of the game — the folks who will go to a few games this year and watch plenty more on TV — baseball’s lockout hasn’t been a serious issue at all. It’s just a bunch of owners and players fighting in the offseason. So what? See you on Opening Day.
But now we enter into a moment where real problems could arise for Major League Baseball. This is the juncture where what has simply been a bad look to this point starts to become bad business.
This is the point where the sport and its future begins to be hurt.
The league has put a deadline on starting the regular season on time — Feb. 28. While that deadline is soft, it’s also practical.
Rosters still need to be filled. Spring training — which is typically six weeks, but will be half of that this season — still needs to happen.
Every day that passes after Feb. 28 without an agreement between the players and owners is a day that will likely be shaved off the season, bringing fans a second shortened season in three years.
And when that happens, I think the sport will start shaving off fans, too.
Worse yet, this edition will have been entirely preventable. A global pandemic limited the 2020 season to 60 games. Hubris and greed will be responsible for this seemingly inevitable truncation.
There is simply no reason for optimism that an agreement will be struck in these final few days before the deadline.
Yes, the parties are negotiating down in Jupiter, Fla., but little is being accomplished. The players are as unified and steadfast as they have been since the 1994 strike. Years of being the clear losers of these negotiations have created a situation they consider to be untenable. The owners like those prior deals (because of course they do) and clearly don’t see any reason to change the status quo.
Side with either side or none, that’s not of issue to me.
The issue is that Major League Baseball’s owners and players are missing the forest through the trees.
They’re fighting over ownership of baseball’s big pile of money.
But that’s actually our money.
Yes, there is a third party in this whole lockout saga — the fans. Die-hard, casual, passing — they’re all being neglected.
How can we fight back?
There’s not much we can do between now and the start of the season, whenever that might be.
March 1, MLB.TV subscriptions auto-renew. Fans should cancel post-haste. This could be a classic case of shrinkflation — paying the same but receiving less product.
Have you ever wanted to drop cable but wanted to watch the Giants so you held off? Now might be the time to make that move. We’ll figure something out once baseball comes back — there are plenty of options out there.
But fans won’t be able to truly stand up for themselves until baseball actually comes back. When the owners start asking for money on a nightly basis again.
They’re not making a good case for why would anyone want to pay up.
Major League Baseball’s owners are holding the top level of the sport hostage. They also seem to hold the game — and anyone who enjoys it — in contempt. Right now, it’s not a real problem. Once games are canceled, it’s an issue.
The owners think we’re suckers. The players, too.
They think that we’ll all just come running back — cash in fists — no matter how strongly we’re ignored, no matter how poorly we’re treated.
I’d like to think both parties are in for a rude awakening in the coming months.
Our entertainment dollar can go to countless places these days.
This coincides with the end of the era of mindless routine. And in a post-pandemic world, the slate has been wiped clean for everyone. You want someone’s dollar? You have to earn it, perhaps all over again.
But I seriously doubt Major League Baseball will do anything to earn that buck moving forward.
There seems to be no conversation about improving the pace of play happening in these negotiations. No plan for making the game more athletic, more engaging, more appealing to the masses.
The players and owners have an incredible opportunity to shape the future of baseball for the better — to modernize a product that is losing more fans than it is gaining.
Instead, they only seem interested in divvying up the cash that’s already on the table.
How can they keep making billions when they keep chasing away fans with countless better things to do? When we’re entering an era where the big money — local cable television deals — is being read its last rites?
I suppose they’ll just keep charging more for the same thing — no, a worse thing.
Once a sport that captured the nation’s collective attention, baseball will become more and more insular at the highest levels. We’ve already seen it happen over the last decade or so. Missing games this year will only accelerate that process.
In the years to come, the price gouging at the ballpark will only increase. The casual fans will commensurately decrease.
And, of course, Major League Baseball won’t realize it’s past a breaking point until long after they cannot reverse things.
The die-hards will get to live out that reality and there won’t be anyone around to replace them.
How do you divvy up that pie?
There are still plenty of opportunities to save things — to start the season on time and update the game to better fit the modern era and better appeal to a wider audience.
A league and a union with progressive thinkers at the helm would be able to see that. They’d be able to see who is funding it all. They’d see that their patrons are unhappy.
It doesn’t seem as if those folks can be found.
Either the owners or the players will win the battle for today’s money — we’ll see — but unless the two lesser parties can figure out how to start a season on time and update this game, they’ll both lose the war.
