If the past few months have reminded us of anything, it’s the importance of finding common ground among our differences in order to productively work together. That’s basically the complete opposite of what Major League Baseball owners and the Players’ Association have done while attempting to reach an agreement on the 2020 regular season.
Among the four major professional sports, baseball has been impacted the most by COVID-19 simply because the season didn’t start before getting halted. The NFL obviously finished its season uninterrupted and while it was a bummer that the NBA and NHL also had to go on hiatus, they each played through most of their respective regular seasons before being forced into creatively finishing it.
So, right from the jump, baseball has been working from a unique position that none of the NFL, NBA, or NHL could truly understand.
What’s seen as an unfortunate series of events — although it pales in comparison to the real tragedies COVID has caused — should’ve also been viewed as an opportunity. Baseball hasn’t been America’s most popular sport for a while now thanks to the gridiron, and basketball is increasingly gaining marketshare. One of Rob Manfred’s charges since becoming commissioner is to engage younger generations in ways they’re not currently doing.
Obviously, that’s where all the pace-of-play initiatives have been coming from. Because, you know, if a nine-inning game ends 10 minutes sooner than it used to, people will start flocking to baseball more than ever before (insert sarcasm here).
With this time of quarantine, social distancing, and no live sports being played, what better opportunity than now for MLB to market its players and engage with fans in a way they haven’t done before? That’s why I thought the MLB The Show players’ tournament was a good idea — it humanized players in a way we as fans don’t get to see as often as we should.
It was subtle, but I loved watching Jeff McNeil give his puppy a celebratory scratch after hitting a home run with Michael Conforto (while wearing his “Puppy Power” shirt). We sometimes forget these incredibly talented athletes are people just like us, they’re bored during quarantine just like us, and they’re filling the void with some video games, just like many of us.
Any kind of small progress made with this initiative was erased as negotiations between the owners and players have dragged on for way too long. And it doesn’t even matter whether you side with the owners or the players (I’m definitely with the players, though) — any feeling of progress doesn’t seem to be there, despite Manfred emphatically proclaiming we’ll have baseball this year.
I like taking an optimistic approach, too, but they don’t have a choice, right? Not having a season because of failed negotiations would be catastrophic.
Either way, it’s hard to feel so sure of it all when so much mud slinging has taken place publicly. While I’ve been following MLB’s return-to-play negotiations the closest, I also haven’t heard or seen any kind of animosity between owners/the league and its players in other pro sports. Just baseball. That’s not going to draw in new fans, especially when a common comparison getting thrown around right now on Twitter is the labor strife the sport went through in the mid-1990s.
The mere thought of having regular season baseball return in time for July 4th gave me goosebumps. There’s nothing more American than baseball on Independence Day, am I right? That idea is out the window now, though, because nobody can seem to get out of their own way.
If MLB had a plan in place prior to the first-year player draft beginning Wednesday night, this particular event could’ve been marketed as the kickoff to baseball season instead of an afterthought, like it generally is to casual fans. There’s still nothing else going on in the sports world (for the most part), giving MLB a captive audience and possibly a number of people who have no choice but to give it a try because they’re bored.
The league has never done a great job in marketing the draft, and with the sole focus on it this week, there was an opportunity to also set the tone for future years. They’re reportedly expecting a bump in ratings, but I’ll side with Brett Taylor of Bleacher Nation in the below tweet when it comes to that subject:
Prediction that will later be impossible to verify but I'll stand by it?
The ratings will be half what they would have been if a deal were in place to return to baseball and the hype were building. https://t.co/0Bz5l9iIhf
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) June 10, 2020
This stoppage in play should’ve been a chance for baseball to get creative by bringing the human side of its superstars into the conversation more and appeal to the types of fans they’d like to attract more of moving forward. Instead of doing that, newswires have been dominated with the bad blood being caused in negotiations and how Manfred may have to unilaterally institute a short season.
Forcing hitters to always keep one foot in the batter’s box and eliminating the four pitches needed to complete an intentional walk aren’t going to bring in the younger generation of fans they want to hook. Sure, it’ll shave off a few minutes on the total time of games, but does it really matter? The game itself won’t change enough to attract a certain demographic. Getting creative in other ways is what’s going to get previously uninterested people to suddenly be intrigued.
MLB has owned the sports narrative throughout this spring. Unfortunately, they’ve done so for all the wrong reasons and wasted a unique opportunity to make progress toward its stated goal of growing interest in such a beautiful game.
