Baseball is edging closer to another disaster — will history repeat itself?
As impasse continues, optimism for any kind of season dwindles.
When the 1994 baseball season was canceled on Sept. 14 after a players strike that began in mid-August, former Commissioner Peter Ueberroth referred to it as “the biggest ‘E’ of all time.”
“The losers are the fans and there is no winner,” Ueberroth said. “1994: the season that struck itself out.”
It took years for the game to regain the trust of fans, and some haven’t returned. Life goes on, after all, and there’s always football.
Baseball eventually rediscovered its bearings, and now is a $10 billion industry with franchise values growing exponentially and some stars signing longterm deals of $200 million and higher.
But with fans hungering to watch games on TV during a pandemic that has turned the sports world upside-down, baseball appears to be committing another unforced error that rivals the ball going through Bill Buckner’s legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.
Is history repeating itself ? It could be, after Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN Monday
he is “not confident” there will be a 2020 season following a breakdown in talks with the players union.
Last week Manfred said he was “100%” certain there would be a season. But on Monday he blamed the players’ union for the season’s possible demise for allegedly threatening to file a grievance if the owners impose their own number of games, expected to be around 50.
The bickering over player compensation in a shortened season has been ongoing for the last month, and the optics clearly are embarrassing for the game.
“It’s just a disaster for our game, absolutely no question about it,” Manfred said. “It shouldn’t be happening, and it’s important that we find a way to get past it and get the game back on the field for the benefit of our fans.”
Whether Manfred’s rhetoric was simply a negotiating tactic or a realistic threat of a lost season was up for debate Monday afternoon. Manfred said the owners were “100% committed to getting baseball back on the field. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that I’m 100% certain that’s going to happen.”
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer tweeted Manfred was holding baseball fans “for ransom” in a cheap negotiating ploy.
“Hold the future of the game for ransom,” Bauer tweeted. “No one believes your bluff, bud.”
The union believes Manfred will impose his own schedule, and further negotiations are “futile,” according to MLBPA chief Tony Clark.
“It’s time to get back to work,” Clark said Saturday in a statement. “Tell us when and where.”
Manfred can do just that and force teams to begin spring training 2.0 in advance of a shortened season. But the union has the right to file a grievance and potentially win millions in lost salaries from a shortened season, claiming MLB reneged on a March agreement to use “best efforts to play as many games as possible.”
The last MLBPA offer was for 89 games at prorated salaries. The union has remained united about receiving 100% of their prorated pay, and has declined to listen to offers with further reductions. MLB countered with 72 games at 70% of prorated salaries, and more if the postseason is completed. The owners insist further reductions in pay are necessary due to playing games in empty ballparks.
With both sides refusing to compromise, MLB can impose their own number of games, paying players 100% of their prorated salaries. They insist on ending the regular season Sept. 27 and the postseason in October to avoid a potential second wave of the coronavirus outbreak this fall.
No matter what happens, baseball’s display of greed and the nonstop accusations have undoubtedly cast the national pastime in a harsh light during a period in which millions of Americans are suffering through economic hardships.
The hope was for baseball to provide a diversion from the last several months, much as the sport helped Americans return to a sense of normalcy in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks. But optimism appears to be dwindling, and fans already have grown accustomed to a baseball-free life after almost three months without games.