Every baseball fan remembers the moments that made them fall in love with the game.
The story often follows a similar arc. Walking into a stadium for the first time and seeing the lush greenery of all the money that team ownership saved by not paying their players what they’re worth. Children’s lives are altered forever when they go to spring training and meet the front-page prospects, Club Control and Financial Flexibility. Who could forget the annual winter tradition of looking at the schedule and making plans for Opening Day, then coming back in a few months to see when the season will actually start?
This is the reality that Rob Manfred — who is on a fast track for worst commissioner in modern sports history — and Major League Baseball’s owners have created.
With Monday’s deadline passing without a new CBA, creating a third straight unusual season, the league has made the disgusting decision to prioritize their own interests over those of the baseball-craved public.
Don’t worry, the season might not start until Memorial Day, but at least 30 of the richest families in America will be a little heavier in the pockets while the future of their franchises live below the poverty line. Fans everywhere can rest easy knowing that their favorite sport will be delayed indefinitely because of an amount of money that the owners could relinquish without even noticing.
Some of those owners, namely Rockies’ CEO Dick Monfort and Yankee fail-son Hal Steinbrenner, have been in Florida physically representing the exact problems that led us to this point. Monfort’s team, among others, has perfected the strategy of drafting good players, paying them nothing, and watching them leave for greener pastures. Steinbrenner is part of the new class of owners whose brains have been analytics-pilled to the point that they forget spending money on big-name talent is still a very strong path to the World Series.
On these core economic issues (the main roadblock between negotiations and actually playing baseball again), the owners have refused to budge, despite the dollar amounts being discussed basically boiling down to chump change for them. The problem is the same one that has plagued America at-large for centuries: the rich and birdbrained who were born on third base and thought they hit a triple don’t want to share their money. Even worse, they do not have one single shred of care for people who rightfully deserve that money.
Consider Tom Ricketts, chairman of the Chicago Cubs. He gained his entry in the MLB owners club through his rich dad, who bought a controlling interest of the team in 2009 and left the operation side of things to Tom. In terms of work, Tom did absolutely nothing to earn that job. While Cubs players, like the rest of MLB players, worked their way up from childhood through amateur and minor league ball to reach the big leagues, all Tom had to do was work his way out of the womb. This is the story of most owners, who were born into their cushy position and are now using it to make sure nothing happens at all.
The league finds itself on the doorstep of a second abbreviated season in three years. With the 2021 season starting in stadiums nowhere near full capacity, it’ll be three straight years of strangeness. The first two were somewhat out of Manfred and the league’s control, but the commissioner’s efforts to have a season in 2020 were laughable. The irony of it all is that the league’s fat cats have clung to their precious money for so long that it will wipe out games, one of the best and easiest ways for them to rake in said money. Had they met the players’ somewhere in the middle during negotiations, sure they would have taken a financial hit, but 162 games of in-person and TV revenue, plus playoffs for the few teams that are actually trying, would have eased that blow significantly.
Now they have no games, no fans shilling out money for tickets, parking and concessions, and certainly nothing to broadcast on television that anybody has interest in watching or paying for. It’s a situation that has gone beyond frustrating and is now firmly in incompetence territory. Of course, this was always the league’s design. Showing any sort of competence or urgency would have benefited the players, something that this group has less than zero interest in.
The players have attempted to negotiate in good faith all winter. The league waited more than six weeks to make its first proposal to the players and then called the feds on them.
The players came to Florida with the goal of getting a deal done before the Feb. 28 deadline. The league let that pass over an amount of money that each of its owners could make in their sleep.
The players are also the ones who, stick with me here, play the games. The owners sit and watch while getting rich beyond our wildest comprehension.
Manfred, the one who represents the owners, is beyond help. Whenever baseball does come back, it is much worse having Manfred in the commissioner chair. He is entering his eighth year at the helm with legitimately nothing that most fans would consider a net positive.
A lockout-tainted season would sit nicely on Manfred’s shelf of ineptitude next to the Astros’ cheating scandal, the constant tampering with the baseballs, and the runner on second in extra innings. When he does introduce new things, they’re usually something no one asked for. When it’s time for him to get to work in order to, you know, make sure the sport exists in 2022 and beyond, he sits on his hands and does nothing.
Manfred is an active detriment to the sport. He’s a huge reason why baseball has lost much of its cultural cache, and why lots of your friends have no idea what Mike Trout or Mookie Betts look like. Now, he’s a chief reason for MLB facing another illegitimate season.
He needs to go.
