Baseball's long extra-inning game between millionaires and billionaires

“…Baseball had a golden opportunity to become the first major American sport to return from the coronavirus pandemic, offering a sense of normalcy and healing amid the national trauma of the last three months. And that’s putting aside the obvious self-interest of having the stage to itself before a captive audience, reconnecting with lapsed fans and getting in front of the younger eyeballs it’s desperate to attract while ESPN has resorted to airing marble racing and cherry-pit spitting.

“Instead, at a time when as many as 30 million Americans have been out of work and nearly 120,000 have died, an increasingly hostile back-and-forth between millionaires and billionaires over how to adequately divide the smaller projected revenue as a result of the pandemic has not only blown MLB’s chance to beat the competition to market, but cast reasonable doubt on whether there will be any season at all. On Monday, commissioner Rob Manfred admitted as much, saying he wasn’t 100% certain there would be any games played this year only five days after guaranteeing there 'unequivocally' would be a 2020 campaign.

“The players claim they’re being shortchanged with their pro-rated salaries, being made to subsidize the owners’ anticipated losses (with increased health risk) after years of not tasting the profits, and have made no secret of their willingness to take their ball and go home. The owners claim the pay cut is necessary given the lower-than-expected revenues with ticket sales out of the equation. But as both sides have dug in and spent months trading offers and counter-proposals, the NBA, NHL and MLS have put together plans to restart in July with a fraction of the hassle, while boxing, mixed martial arts, the PGA Tour and Nascar have all adapted on the fly and found ways to resume activity without fans.

“Baseball has been here before, done in from within by ego and greed. The infamous work stoppage during the homestretch of the 1994 season led to the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years, an unforced error it took the sport a decade to recover from. Yet there’s every reason to believe it would face a steeper uphill climb in today’s climate if that doomsday scenario were to repeat itself. 

“Baseball games are longer and slower than ever before at a time when young people are growing up on the commercial-less experiences served up by MLS and the Premier League, which airs matches on free-to-air NBC. The gravity of these existential problems is almost enough to make us forget the sport is fresh off a sign-stealing scandal that’s embroiled two of the last three champions and shaken the public trust in the game.

“A year without MLB could drive home a point that no one involved should want in the public domain: that we can live without it. While baseball’s place in our past is indelible, far less certain is where it belongs in our future. Both sides have made it clear they’re taking its place in the American consciousness for granted…” (Bryan Armen Graham, “Major League Baseball is making the error of a lifetime”).