Major League Baseball, the Team Owners, and the Players Associations have a long history together. That history is full of disdain, spite, deceit, and work stoppages. Most notably, the player strike of 1994 which led to the majority of the season being cancelled, including the World Series. It has been 26 years since that fateful season. 26 years without a stoppage in Major League Baseball. That streak is going to end at 26 years.
The 2016 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) ended at midnight on December 2016. The Players Association and the owners are reportedly “miles apart” from each other in their negotiations. This led to a unanimous vote by the owners to lockout the players on Wednesday night.
This lockout is certainly not a surprise. In fact, we all expected. During the summer of 2020 the American public got a glimpse into how strained the relationship between the Players Association and owners truly has become. Major League Baseball had the opportunity to be the first major sport back in the United States. They could have been the only show in town and regained their footing as America’s Pastime in our hour of need. Instead, the players and owners spent the summer haggling over prorated salaries in a 60 game season. By the time there was an agreement, the NFL and NBA were already back in action. Baseball lost their opportunity and left a foreshadowing of what was to come in the winter of 2021.
Both the Owners and the Players Association have demands and items that they want implemented. Unfortunately, the demands diametrically oppose each other. The owners want to spend less money, continue to manipulate free agency, and institute a salary cap. The Players Association wants to start the clock on free agency earlier and implement a salary floor to ensure higher salaries and competition amongst players and teams.
What neither side seems to realize is that they are causing caldron of trouble that will create a stew of distrust, anger, apathy, and a lack of sympathy from the fans. The owners and players are too short-sighted in their current state to either (a) see the damages they will cause or (b) care about the damage they will cause to the sport. A sport that nearly lost all support after the strike of 1994 seems to have forgotten the painful lessons that followed. It took a steroid fueled home run race to pull fans back into baseball. Steroid use is tamer, the Red Sox and Cubs have broken their curse, and the average fan age for major league baseball is in the 50’s. If games are cancelled, I can’t see what saves baseball.
There are still several weeks until pitchers and catchers report for duty. I am hopeful, albeit not confident, that both sides will reach an agreement in time. On the way to an agreement, it is going to get contentious. Shots will fire across enemy lines back and forth through the media and over social media. Each side will get angrier and dig even deeper into their trenches with no sign of compromise. The contentions have started as team websites removed headshots of players. This is only the beginning I’m afraid. To reach an agreement, there must be pressure from fans and the reality of losing millions of dollars. For all of our sakes, they reach an agreement closer to the 4th of January instead of the 4th of July.