If MLB and the MLBPA don't agree on a new collective bargaining agreement by the end of Monday, it will be terrible for baseball. There is a time and a place for it.
The clean-slate rebirth, the start of spring training, and the new calendar are what baseball is supposed to be doing this off-season. The so-called "defensive lockout" of commissioner Rob Manfred has been offensive. There is no new season yet.
The spring training games have been canceled. Regular-season games are likely to be next unless an agreement is reached in the next few hours.
The announcement of the Hall of Fame in January signaled another of the game's lowest points: the spectacle of steroid suspicion and the display of justice. One of the few recent Hall of Famers who didn't get in trouble made news of his own. He quit as CEO and dumped his equity stake in the team. Baseball can't get it right.
As acrimony between management and players grew, one line of thinking suggested that a new approach on both sides would be the answer to the more than half-century of labor.
Tony Clark was appointed executive director of the MLB players union. The union has never been run by an ex- player. After the death of Donald Fehr's successor, Michael Weiner, Clark's arrival signaled a different approach. The MLBPA still had its share of lawyers and negotiators, but it was run by players.
MLB's leadership responded to Clark's vision not as a fresh start, but as a golden opportunity to break the union. Clark has been rumored to be in over his head for several years. During Clark's first negotiation, ownership bragged over what they saw as a victory. The players have been saying for the past two years that ownership would see a different adversary on the other side of the table. The direction and feel of the sport has made that resolve stronger.
The fan might be tempted to blame the billionaires and millionaires, but that would be incorrect and simplistic. Some players are millionaires. Most of the owners are billionaires. The players share has fallen four years in a row as the money has risen. All economies have a middle class, and baseball has been decreasing.
Money is one of the most obvious elements of a broken game, so it's no wonder the conflicts for anyone who has been watching the game past the final score must know that. There are several areas of contention that have been going on for a long time.
Baseball has always been defined by crankiness, a virtue that can be used in good times. These are not good times. The fight over money is a constant. The nature of defeat is over-avenging grievances. The current labor struggle is part of a larger owner/front-office strategy that has already been felt on the field.
Baseball has always been seen as out of step because of its past, style, and conservative beliefs. The sport was criticized for taking too long when the average game length was less than two hours. Baseball was boring to watch, and as a spectator, he preferred basketball and football. In 1957.
In the past, the owners and players seemed to agree on the nature of the game in the final negotiation. There are questions of how the future game is going to look, how it will be played, and why. The previous manifestations of owner greed did not directly threaten the play on the field. Baseball's union has been broken since the Johnson administration by owners trying to not pay players or wrest back free agency. Whether the fight was titanic, as in 1981 or 1994, or defining but contained, as in 1972, the battle was about money and the salary cap in 1994. Baseball owners have been trying to kill free agency since 1975.
The current rules, already in favor of owners, aren't enough to impact the game on the field. The goal of squeezing the orange is not to make the juice taste better. A new breed of personnel now runs baseball, bent on treating it as a Fortune 500 company rather than as a sport, finding loopholes to exert even more control without much thought or interest in its consequences. Baseball people are manipulating the sport to make it less import in order to improve it.
The departments try to control the game through manipulation, either through the combination of service time and keeping big-league ready players in the minor league to prevent them from reaching free agency on time, or losing on purpose.
The former has had examples like David Price and Kris Bryant. The disabled/injured list has been manipulated by teams.
The latter is not doing well. The Moneyball generation of fans who think along with the front offices instead of emulating the batting stances of their favorite players may be tolerant of teams losing as a practical method to improve future teams. The players who are expected to perform for a team that is not trying to win are less likely to be forgiven.
The sport has taken on an impersonal, assembly-line characteristic; teams play for outs, but the players play for pride, professionalism. The players were told the commissioner of the game took no pride in what they did. They were paid high.
The owners are trying to kill free agency in a different way. The proposal to expand to a 14-team playoffs will result in less player movement. Teams will be less likely to make deals or improve their teams with big signings if a team needs to be slightly over.500 to make the playoffs.
Baseball is one sport in which teams cannot field their best lineups every game because of pitching rotation. It is happening through an NFL-style competitive balance tax, and by manipulating service time, teams are pushing back when players can become free agents, then argue the players are too old to merit long-term contracts. The owners refused to listen to the players when they argued against reducing free-agent eligibility.
The people who run the games will eventually be defeated by the power of the sport. The players are the game and fans will get caught up in it. The loss has been exposed every day. The last few months have made the sport look worse.
Baseball will not kill it because the players always save it, but it has made it less attractive to watch. It is one thing to watch a business fight over money, but another when the people who run the business seem to have little respect for it.
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