As baseball remains shut down on economic issues, union executive director Tony Clark observed, “Players have been commoditized, monetized in a way that is really hard to explain.” He is right. Over the last CBA the game traded its soul, its humanism, for ruthless efficiency in which the guiding principle was not to entertain but to hack every incremental probability. Players were reduced to a metric, be it WAR or a luxury tax salary number, a cold diminution that does not happen in the NFL and NBA, where personality is allowed to flourish.
Baseball needs to return the game and its players to a more fan-friendly path. That is just another reason why these negotiations are so insulting to fans. Among items on the table, what is more important than how the game is played and how the World Series champion is decided? And yet these items are being commoditized, to borrow from Clark. The entertainment value needs more consideration.
Neville E. Guard/USA TODAY Sports
