MINNEAPOLIS — Please, let's never do this again.
By "this," I mean, let's never pretend that a baseball labor negotiation is the end of the world or even the end of a season.
The popular stance regarding baseball's collective bargaining agreements and the owners' lockout of the players has been to scream and kvetch over the greed on display, and to vow that we'll never go to another ballgame.
But after all of the owners' threats and all the worry, what happened?
Baseball will for the 27th consecutive season not miss any games over a labor dispute.
Every five years or so, the players and owners threaten and pose and posture during negotiations and baseball fans react like children who have had their binkies taken away … and then baseball plays a full season.
If you want to blame someone for the belated start to spring training this year, blame the owners. They imposed the lockout, posted false deadlines and made bogus threats.
They also got a deal done in time to play a complete regular season, and they gave the players valuable concessions — including increasing minimum pay, perhaps the best concession the players as a whole could have received.
Now let's address the most popular fan sentiment during negotiations: "I'll never go to another game."
This might be true for a tiny portion of the fan base. Data says it is, mostly, a lie.
I have proof.
In 1993, the Twins, not far removed from two World Series titles in a five-year span, began to collapse. In 1994, the players struck, leading to the cancellation of the '94 World Series and a delayed start to the '95 season.
Millions of baseball fans vowed they would not return to big league ballparks. Twins fans had more reason than most to boycott.
From '93 to 2000, the Twins did not post a winning season, and they stunk it up while playing in one of the world's worst ballparks. From 1998 to 2000 they spent as little as possible on players, not even pretending to try to win. "Studio baseball," it was called then. "Tanking" is what we call it now.
Following the 2000 season, Twins owner Carl Pohlad volunteered to "contract" or eliminate the franchise. Whether he was serious or this was a cynical ploy to win public funding for a new stadium, it was an ugly move by a tight-fisted owner in a market that no longer mattered.
Cheap, destructive owner. Terrible, dilapidated, indoor ballpark. A sport reeling from its steroid scandal.
Terrible team. Zero stars, following the tragic end of Kirby Puckett's career. All following a work stoppage that foisted upon us a replacement-player spring training and a canceled World Series.
If ever a fan base was justified in never returning to the ballpark, it was the Twins', in the early 2000s.
So what happened next?
The Twins contended with a fun, young group of players in 2001. Attendance went from 1.0 million to 1.8 million.
In 2002, the Twins won the division and advanced to the ALCS. Attendance increased by 142,000.
By 2005, Twins attendance was up to 2 million. In 2006, the Twins received funding for their new ballpark. In 2009, their last year in the Metrodome, their attendance was 2.4 million. In 2010, their first year in Target Field, they drew 3.2 million.
That's a lot of people not not going to the ballpark.
This all happened without the Twins reaching a World Series or developing another magnetic star like Puckett.
Use the word "lockout" or "strike," and baseball fans will gnash their teeth and clutch their pearls and swear to punish the game itself.
They almost all come back, and those who do come back will be accompanied by many who never went before.
Let's admit it. We're Americans. We're addicted to entertainment.
If the local team stinks, we will air our grievances about the millionaires and billionaires and their greed.
If the local team contends, we're going back to the ballpark.
