CHICAGO — Where were we again?
Oh, yeah. Marcus Stroman is a Chicago Cub. Craig Kimbrel is still with the White Sox. Joe West is gone.
And baseball is back, same as it ever was after MLB and the players union on Thursday tentatively agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement, with nine-inning games in doubleheaders, no more ghost runners in extra innings and expensive beers soon to be available at a ballpark near you.
No hard feelings. We take back all those nasty things we said. Well, some of them, at least.
The owners’ lockout was still unnecessary, and their bargaining methods left a lot to be desired. Commissioner Rob Manfred’s credibility is shot, not that he had much in the first place. Maybe it’s time for Theo Epstein to step up and take the reins.
Hopefully MLB can look at this disgraceful episode in baseball labor history as a proverbial teaching moment, as managers say when players ignore unwritten rules and homer on a 3-0 pitch. Maybe they can all reflect on how they played with fans’ emotions, pretending a deal was near only to pull the rug out from under them at the last minute — not once but multiple times.
We won’t know for another five years, when the new collective bargaining agreement ends, whether they’ve learned anything from the bad behavior. We only can pray.
So who won?
Who really cares?
Both sides eventually got some things they wanted, including the adoption of the universal designated hitter, a rule many of us traditionalists deplore but knew was an inevitability when Epstein began talking it up when he became Cubs president 11 years ago.
Ads on jerseys and batting helmets? Of course. You knew neither side cared about the sanctity of a baseball uniform, even the hallowed New York Yankees pinstripes. They’ll all look like NASCAR drivers by the time Generation Z hands the game down to Generation Zzzzz in 20 years.
The postseason will be expanded to 12 teams, ensuring the wild-card races will last longer and that a mediocre team can still win the World Series if it gets hot at the right time. No one will be out of it at the trade deadline, except, of course, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles.
The Cubs’ epic sell-off in July wouldn’t have been necessary with a third National League wild-card team giving them a shot at the postseason. Sorry, Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez Javy and Kris Bryant. You were a little too early.
There will be no pitch clock this season, but look for that to be implemented in 2023, ending baseball’s long and magical run as “the game without a clock.” This also was inevitable because modern-day hitters refuse to get in the box without adjusting their batting gloves over and over again and modern-day pitchers refuse to throw the ball without doing the deep breathing exercises mandated by their mental-skills coaches. This is one rule change we can all blame on the players.
Baseball times, they are a changing, and whether you like it or not, everything is probably on the table over the next decade.
Just read a comment made last year by Morgan Sword, MLB’s executive vice president, baseball economics & operations, on MLB honchos brainstorming over possible rules changes down the road.
“Any rule that we have, we’ve talked about changing: Change the bats, change the balls, change the bases, change the geometry of the field, change the number of players on the field, change the batting order, change the number of innings, the number of balls and strikes,” Sword said. “We talked about regulating the height of grass on the infield to speed up ground balls and create more hits. We’ve never talked about this in any serious way, but we talked about allowing fans to throw home-run balls back and keep them in play. That’s one that I don’t even like.”
Well, why in the world not? That’s just as dopey as some of the other “brainstorming” ideas, such as changing the number of players on the field. And it’s relatively easy to envision fans at Wrigley Field throwing back an opposing home-run ball to keep it in play, even though they probably would miss the cutoff man. Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts could even employ some ringers in the bleachers, paying them in beer.
Maybe the dinosaurs in the press box are wrong and the MLB honchos are right. Perhaps it’s time to rethink everything about the game, which obviously has not appealed to kids now accustomed to nonstop video-game action and YouTube.
World Series ratings have been dismal over the course of the 21st century, dropping from 25.47 million viewers in 2003 to 9.78 million in 2020. Last year saw a slight uptick to 11.75 million viewers, which is still pathetic for a sport that calls itself the “national pastime.”
Cord cutting might be the new national pastime, and with runaway inflation, more and more viewers surely will be looking at ways to cut expenses, including those outrageous fees for regional sports networks on their monthly cable bills. Did Cubs fans watch Marquee Sports Network at all during the lockout, even as they paid for it over the last three months of the owners’ lockout?
Anyway, baseball is back, and everyone is glad to see the owners and players didn’t ruin the game by bickering away an entire season. A free-agent frenzy over the next couple of weeks and the opening of camps in Florida and Arizona will help fans get over the pain from this nuclear winter.
Our summer plans have not been spoiled. Hope still springs eternal.
For those who really love the game, baseball could not kill itself if it tried, and lord knows some of the owners have tried and tried.
Maybe now they’ll stop taking us for granted. Or is that just wishful thinking?
