Reports of a tentative agreement between MLB and the Player’s Association for a short season would be welcome news. To experience the national game, in any form this summer, would give the country a needed lift.
Recognizing the reality of empty stadiums and a gimmicky season that may end prematurely with a second viral wave, the players should be inclined to sign on the dotted line, now that MLB has agreed to full prorated salaries and a playoff pool of 16 teams. The players owe it to the fans who continue to make baseball our pastime, especially those who came of age around 1994.
That was a glorious season. It was before the steroid era, record strikeouts, and widespread, high-tech sign-stealing. I was playing shortstop for Monsignor Scanlan, a Catholic school in the Bronx, and closely following Don Mattingly’s best chance at a pennant. It was also the season the Expos had a riveting squad led by Moises Alou, Larry Walker, and Pedro Martinez.
The Expos, at 74-40, were the best in baseball, with their sights set on a championship that could have led to Labatt Park being constructed and the team staying in Montreal.
It was a season with twice as many games as can be played this year. But it was different. The players walked off the field in the middle of August. Union leadership, led by Donald Fehr, along with the players, committed baseball’s greatest sin since Walter O’Malley took New York’s Brooklyn team west. To cancel the 2020 season when the country yearns for good news would be similar to la disgrazia of ’94.
Until Spring Training II commences, there is room for the players to sink the hearts of a new generation. Their recent tactic illustrates how precarious the situation is. The union dug in and stopped negotiations, asking Commissioner Robert Manfred to set an expected 50-game schedule at full prorated salaries. It led the commissioner to realize that a billion-dollar grievance was the primary motivation. There appeared to be an unwillingness on the union’s end to recognize the reality of something that only happened once in MLB history and made for an ugly spectacle — empty stadiums.
MLB maintained the more reasonable position, acknowledging that a more modest number of contests would have to be scheduled than the union was proposing, recognizing that a great number will have no fans. This means historic decreases in revenue in a business model by which 40% of revenue has come from fan attendance — ticket sales, concessions, and parking.
Hockey and basketball look to be coming back, but these sports are not baseball, which was built as our major cities and industries rose in post-Civil War America. There is a transcendence to baseball, which is meant to be played outdoors until the weather, as opposed to a virus, drives us inside. This year has been trying in countless ways. Hopefully, it is not ugly enough to spoil the small measure of grace a truncated baseball season would provide.
Sean Roman Strockyj is an opinion writer and sports enthusiast from Queens, New York.
