MLB News/Rumors: Is Baseball ready to drive off that cliff? It appears so

Mar 14, 2020; New York, New York, USA; A pedestrian wearing a face mask walks by the gate 4 entrance at Yankee Stadium. The MLS home opener for New York City FC against the FC Dallas has been postponed due the COVID-19 pandemic. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports

The baseball world went on hold almost three months ago, and New York Yankee fans and fans of all of MLB are still waiting to see the “boys of summer” play.  Other sports, NHL, NBA, and NFL, are all planning for getting their high contact sports going, but is the non-contact sport of baseball ready to drive off a cliff?  It appears so, were no lessons learned from 1994?

MLB and MLBPA (players union) and been in mudslinging mode for three weeks now with a resolution to issues seemingly not on the horizon, not to be anywhere near close. All this contentiousness while the baseball season is quickly slipping away.  A July 4th start of a shortened season now seems a thing of the past.  Yes, it’s about the coronavirus, but mostly it’s only about money.

Are these sides so blind that they don’t see the irreparable damage that will be done to their careers and the reputation of baseball?  Were no lessons learned when the 1994 season was canceled?  In the 1980s, baseball was America’s sport.  After lost revenues, lost fans, and a loss of respect for the sport, baseball never came back from that, and Football took over as the number one sport.  Just in the past few years, with all the young players entering the sport, the pastime was gaining a revival.  Are the players and owners going to let that hope disappear into oblivion?

For players, this will be a season they will never get back in their short playing careers.  MLB is not a sport you play into your sixties.  The average player career is 5.6 years, according to a study.  Yes, there are some that play for 15 or even 20 years but that is not the norm.  For these players, a loss of a season’s pay is nothing to be sneezed at; they will never get that back.

For owners, most will survive and live on to sell that $ 9 beer and hot dogs that can cost as much as $7, but the damage will already be done as fans become reluctant to pay $65 for that seat and the $15 parking fee to see a game they have lost respect for.  After 1994 and the canceled World Series, the fans never came back to past numbers.  A canceled 2020 season will not be easily forgotten by MLB fans. It could even put some teams in jeopardy.

No season is not going to benefit either side of the negotiations.  No one in the talks is acting in good faith.  Owners continue to make proposals they know the players won’t accept, players, refuse to budge on their demands.  At this point, both sides have to realize this is not 1994; it’s 2020 when fans have been quarantined for months from a dread virus, 41 million Americans are out of work, and there is unrest in the streets.  American needs baseball, and they need it now.

Jason Stark, the senior baseball writer for The Atlantic, recently wrote:

When you disappear off the face of the sporting earth for a year and a half, you’re just inviting people to go do something else, watch something else, care about something else. Many of those people never find their way back. Why should they? Why would they?

Baseball, are you listening?

EmpireSportsMedia.com’s Columnist William Parlee is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research.  Follow me on Twitter @parleewilliam.