Will there be baseball this summer or not?
With the country beginning a slow reopen, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, professional sports are ramping up plans to resume.
The NBA is working towards a proposal to be voted on by the league’s board of governors. Owners are expected to approve commissioner Adam Silver’s recommendation on a format to restart their season in Orlando.
Hockey is on the right track too.
The NHL announced its Return to Play plan, a format where 24 teams will compete for the Stanley Cup. Now, all signs point to a return to the ice.
And then there’s baseball.
Because while the NBA, NFL, and NHL go about their respective goals of getting back to work, MLB is doing what they do best – giving their fans plenty of reason not to care if they go back to work or not.
Where does MLB and the players currently stand on a return to play?
Money is the issue, it’s always been the issue. Both sides will spin it in a way where it’s not about the money. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, they’re both right. It’s also about trust. They don’t trust one another.
The Major League Baseball Players Association delivered a return-to-play proposal to MLB. This was a response to the MLB plan initially presented to them. The players rejected that proposal.
MLB’s initial plan called for an 82-game season. It’s important to remember in all this, as it currently stands, that games will be played this year in empty stadiums. No fans in the seats equates to less revenue for team owners. Therefore, the league is arguing the more baseball games played this season, the more money they’ll lose. The players countered with a 114-game season in their return-to-play proposal.
A second wave of COVID-19 would put postseason games at risk of cancellation. We’re a country currently enduring extreme unrest. This has heightened concerns on both sides of the table as it pertains to maintaining full prorated salaries for players.
In the early days of COVID-19, the players agreed to take pay cuts.
The union and MLB agreed March 26 that players would receive prorated shares of salaries. The union is arguing they’ve already met the league halfway.
The owners are citing the part in that agreement that covered only games in regular-season ballparks and with fans. They now want the players to meet them halfway on this. Meanwhile, the players don’t want to take more pay cuts.
The proposal from the players to the league likely won’t get far with the owners . But there’s optimism it’ll bridge the gap for a potential deal.
Time is working against both sides
Jeff Passan of ESPN is reporting if Major League Baseball and the players can’t come to an agreement on a return-to-play deal, the league is discussing implementing a shorter season in which the league would pay players a full prorated share of their salaries. The shorter season could be somewhere in the 50-game range.
Regardless of what side of the argument we land on, time is working against the league and the union. Any hopes of a return to baseball by early July are fading with each day that goes without an agreement.
There’s a lot of ground to cover in negotiations in a short amount of time. The players will still need satisfactory time for a second Spring Training. And then there’s the matter of venues also needing prep time for games.
And, above all else, there’s still the fact we’re all trying to recover from a pandemic which has crippled the nation.
So, what is it that both sides don’t want?
I’ve read where some are calling it the “nuclear” option. And that’s no baseball season at all.
But to go this route, while the country is trying to reopen, and while their colleagues are working towards resuming, would be feeding into the perception of billionaires bickering with millionaires over money.
This has long been the narrative in sports labor, especially for baseball. But our nation is in unfamiliar territory and struggling to figure a way out of it. Now’s not the time for a game of chicken between wealthy billionaires and millionaire-athletes.
When it comes to changing the perception, baseball talks a good game. Here’s an ideal time to act.
Attendance has been declining for almost a decade. MLB has been struggled to market their product to the youth, specifically minorities. According to Marketwatch, the average age of baseball viewers is 57, with only 7% of viewers under 18.
Baseball games are still too long, and playoff games in prime time – the games where you should pull in the casual fan – struggle to hold the viewer’s attention because they don’t end on the east coast until after midnight.
There are still more than enough fans wanting to watch games played again. There’s still time to prove their words are sincere when it involves wanting to play again.
This isn’t the time for baseball to go back and forth over money and lost revenue. Returning to the playing field this summer won’t solve everything that’s wrong, however, it’s a start.
Both sides claim they don’t want to go “nuclear” in 2020. Now’s the time to show fans you mean it. The entire sports world is watching on this one.