Analysis: Baseball is stuck and time is running out
The people MLB needs to worry about, the people it can’t afford to lose, are the people who glance at the sport with moderate interest and see bickering, not baseball. MLB is no longer in a position where it must simply keep the fans it has. To thrive long-term, to keep up or at least keep within shouting distance of the NBA , it must gain new fans.
Commissioner Rob Manfred and his staff have spent the past few years talking about growing the game, reaching new demographics and making the sport more appealing to people who have lost touch with it. The on-field product has yet to reflect that goal. The current off-field product — a labor dispute that has canceled a week of spring training already and will cost fans at least 10 spring training games per team — is antithetical to it.
But the sides are stuck, in part because needing to appeal to a broader base doesn’t mean either side is wrong to push for the most favorable agreement possible. They are stuck because expecting either to concede an inch to the other for the sake of the sport is unrealistic. Manfred’s title, commissioner of baseball, implies stewardship of the sport.
But players and owners have always been that way. Something about this year’s negotiation has reinvigorated an obstinacy that used to define these negotiations every five years. The something is this: The players felt they lost negotiations in 2016, that they ceded ground in their CBA and therefore gritted their teeth ahead of 2021. They hired Bruce Meyer, who had never been the lead man on an MLB negotiation before, to help them.
So they are here, at Roger Dean Stadium, roughly 48 hours away from letting this labor dispute turn into the most destructive in a generation, consumed by the details and ensuring the public knows the other side is to blame — calculating only how the details of a deal will affect their livelihoods, unwilling and unable to calculate what will be lost for every day they go without one.
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