Baseball’s season has now entered what is supposed to be pre-season, a clean rebirth, the start of spring practice and a new schedule. But the so-called “defence of commissioner Rob Manfred lockout“was very upset. There is no new season yet.
Spring training game has been cancelled. No deal for the next few hoursThe regular game is definitely next.
This, following the Hall of Fame announcement in January, signifies one of the game’s lowest scores: Bonds Barry, Roger Clemens and David Ortiz reduced to a spectacle of self-imposed suspicion of steroids and selective display of justice. Even Derek Jeter, one of the few Hall of Famers recently inducted without controversy, made the news about himself during the lockdown. Jeter, a former owner of the Miami Marlins, has just stepped down as CEO and sold his shares. Baseball still can’t get it right.
Over the years, as animosity grew between management and the players, a stream of thoughts suggested that the relationship was so toxic that what the baseball team really needed was new leadership – that the Fresh voices and new approaches for both sides will be the answer to more – more than half a century of labor conflict between players and owners.
The appointment of Tony Clark as chief executive officer of the MLB players union is exactly that. Since its founding in 1966 as a true collective bargaining unit, the union has never been run by a former player. Clark’s arrival in 2013 – following the death of Donald Fehr’s successor, Michael Weiner – signaled a different approach. The MLBPA still has the necessary share of attorneys and negotiators, but Clark’s vision is a true player-for-player-led, player-led union.
MLB leadership responded to Clark’s vision not as a fresh start, but as a golden opportunity to finally break the alliance. Clark has had whispers over the past few years. Ownership brazenly gloated over what they saw as a romp compared to the players in Clark’s first bargain. But it strengthened the resolve of the players, who have said for the past two years that possession will meet another opponent on the other side of the table. That determination has been underpinned by the direction and feel of the sport.
In the middle are fans, who might be tempted to blame billionaires and millionaires – but that wouldn’t be precise and straightforward. Some The player is a millionaire. Almost all Owners are billionaires. As the amount has increased, the percentage of players has dropped – four years in a row and is continuing to grow. All economies have middle classes, and baseball – like America’s – is shrinking.
These conflicts for anyone who has watched the game beyond the final score must know money is just one of the most obvious elements of a broken game. Several areas of dispute have built up over the years.
Unlike its younger rivals, baseball has always been defined by irritation, a curved edge that in good times can be massaged into a classic virtue. This is not a good time. The war over money is a constant of capital. Too much vengeance for past grievances is the essence of failure. But this current labor struggle represents a skeptical manipulation that has been felt in the field, unchecked so far as part of a larger owner/office strategy.
Baseball – for its past, its style, its conservative belief in its traditions – has always been seen as outmoded. When the average game length was a little over two hours in the 1950s, the sport was criticized for dragging on too long. Shortly after retiring, Jackie Robinson in 1958 told a reporter that watching baseball was boring, and as a spectator, he preferred basketball and football. 1958.
However, in the past, owners and players seem to agree on the fundamental nature of the game – at least in the final negotiation. Today’s void are philosophical questions about how the game of the future will look, how it will be played, and why. Previous manifestations of hostility, while no longer appealing, do not directly threaten actual play on the field. The owners have been trying to disrupt the baseball league since the Johnson administration by trying not to pay the players or by finding a way to regain their freedom. Whether the war was gruesome, as in 1981 or 1994, or definite but contained, as in 1972, the battle centered on money matters: the 1972 pension war, compensation for agents freedom in 1981, salary cap in 1994. Baseball owners have been trying to kill free agency since its founding in December 1975.
However, Manfred’s current lockdown affects more directly the game on the field – the current rules, which are already in favor of owners, are not enough. Ownership is squeezing oranges with no intention of making the juice tastier. A new team of people is now running baseball, treating it more like a Fortune 500 company than a sport, finding loopholes for more control without thinking or caring. its consequences. Today people use this sport not to improve aesthetics but to reduce the import of players.
Analysts try to control the game through manipulation, through service time matching (keeping underage players who are ready for the big leagues to prevent them from going to the right free agent. hours) and intentionally lose.
The forerunner had some blatant examples: David Price with the Tampa Bay Rays, Kris Bryant with the Chicago Cubs. Under Manfred, teams adapted the roster using the disabled/injured list.
Then there’s the tank. Generations of Moneyball fans think that along with main offices instead of emulating the batting views of their favorite players, being able to tolerate losing teams as a practical method to improve teams Future. But players who are expected to show off for a team that aren’t trying to win are less forgiving, especially when players hear booing when it comes up, they’re not giving their all.
The sport has taken on an assembly-line ethos, impersonal; Teams play for the goal, but the players play for competition, pride, professionalism. That, combined with Manfred calling the World Series trophy a “piece of metal”, the game’s commissioner told the players to take no pride in what they’ve done. They are just high paying widgets.
The owners are still trying to kill the free agent, they are trying to do it in a different way. Even the proposal to expand to 14 teams post-season (it would be disastrous not to reduce the length of the regular season to 162 games) would likely result in players being less mobile. If a team just needs to be slightly above .500 to make it to the knockout stages, then teams are less likely to make deals or improve their team with big signings.
This is especially dangerous in baseball, a sport where, due to rotation of pitches, teams are unable to put out their best lineups in every game. It’s happening through an NFL-style competitive equalization tax (disclosure warning: it’s a pay cap), and by manipulating service time, teams are pushing back when players can become big freestyle – then argued that the player was too old to be worthy of a long-term contract. When the players argued to reduce their free agent status from six years to five, the owner refused.
When the games finally return, the power of the sport will surpass those who run it. Fans will get caught up in the checkers races and all the magical talents on the field, because the players are the game. But every day this lock is at a loss. The last few months have cemented some of the ugliness for the sport.
It wouldn’t kill baseball – because the players always save it – but it did make it a little less appealing, watch it a little less. It is one thing to watch a business compete for money, but it is quite another when the people running the business seem to have little respect for it.
