The Sadness Of Being A Baseball Fan.

It pains us to say it, but the sport of baseball is in trouble. The people who are supposed to be the stewards of what used to be known as “The National Pastime” simply are out of touch with not only reality, but also the people who buy tickets.

The negotiation of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement has simply been a joke. After locking the players out (let us repeat, the players are NOT on strike), they waited 43 days before sitting down and negotiating with the players. 43 days!

No sense of urgency at all.

The commissioner, Rob Manfred, who is hired by the owners, has revealed himself as a vindictive, petty man. He had one of the premier baseball writers ever, Ken Rosenthal, removed from the sport’s network because he dared to criticize the commish on his handling of the sport during the COVID year of 2020.

He also was laughing during a press conference the other day when he was announcing the cancellation of the first two series of the 2022 season. A somber mood would be more appropriate.

The owners continue to cry poor, when there is a whole lot of evidence to the contrary. Here in Cleveland, we have an owner that is always telling the fans how difficult it is to make ends meet, but meanwhile cuts payroll and leaves ticket prices the same.

Besides canceling games this season, think about what the leadership of the game has given fans over the past three years.

First, one of the things the MLB office does is constantly tell everyone how bad their sport is and how it needs fixing. No other professional sport does this. We aren’t saying baseball is perfect, but would you buy a car if the dealer told you what a lemon it was?

The owners panacea is to expand the playoffs to 14 teams, making it more like the NBA. Apparently, the players balked and they decided on 12 teams, which is still too many considering the regular season is 162 games, and the best team wins roughly 60% of its games.

It’s strictly a money grab for the owners, who have revalued the regular season already and this will continue with more teams in the playoffs.

The ownership group has also given fans a ghost runner in extra inning games and seven inning doubleheaders, and are proposing a rule limiting how a team can play defense (banning the shift). Our opinion on that is you are rewarding players who are not good hitters.

The owners always focus on the payroll discrepancy within the sport. But isn’t that more on the smaller payroll teams? There were only two teams that exceeding the tax threshold last season, the Dodgers and Padres. Meanwhile, there were eight teams with payrolls less than $75 million, including the Guardians/Indians.

We have heard several fans say at least the Dolans want to win. Do they? We think they like winning. Everyone does.

We will say the same thing about owners as we do about players. We’d rather have an owner that hates losing more than one that likes winning.

The owners on the lower end of the payrolls spectrum are happy spending little, and even happier if they happen to win while doing it.

Fans who love the sport say something has to change, and they are right. Someone with some common sense needs to be in charge. Until that happens, we are afraid the sport will continue to fade in the sports fan’s psyche.

That’s not good for the future of the “grand ol’ game”.

Baseball Needs Leadership, Manfred Ain’t The Guy

Baseball is out of the public eye these days because of the lockout enforced by the owners, and their seemingly unwillingness to sit down at the negotiating table to hammer out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

We have read reports the two sides will return to the bargaining table soon, but hey, it’s no rush guys, spring training doesn’t start until the middle of next month.

When they are in the news now, you can predict it is usually for the wrong reasons, such as when it was announced one of the best baseball writers in the business, Ken Rosenthal, was no longer going to be affiliated with MLB Network.

Apparently, Rosenthal was critical of commissioner Rob Manfred for how he handled the sport during the shortened pandemic season of 2020, and the czar holds a grudge.

Talk about pettiness. Can’t we all agree the commissioner of a major sport should be above something like that?

Rosenthal will be just fine. First, he loves the sports and is a great writer, and he still writes for The Athletic, and he is part of Fox Network’s baseball coverage.

To us, it just is another example of the poor leadership exemplified by Manfred, who we wonder if he even likes the sport.

The problem is the commissioner is hired by the owners, and they look at the sport as a way to fill their pockets with massive amounts of cash, without regard to the future of the grand ol’ game.

All pretenses that the commissioner is the puppet of ownership was put to rest when Bud Selig, the then owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, replaced Fay Vincent in the position, because the owners felt Vincent intervened during the 1990 lockout of the players.

The big question to us is why should the selection of the commissioner fall solely on the owners? This automatically means the leadership of the sport favors one side in any dispute, and that’s the side he works for.

How convenient, right?

We know it will never happen, but it would be nice if the commissioner of the sport held the well being of both parties in making decisions. Especially because the players are the game. Ballparks all over the country are not being filled to watch the owners count their money.

The sport needs a strong leader now more than ever, and we have serious questions whether Manfred even likes the sport he is in charge of.

What the game has going for it more than anything else is tradition. Essentially, the game being played today is the same sport that Babe Ruth played, that Jackie Robinson played. You can’t say that about football or basketball.

Baseball needs to change, and the problem is not the way Manfred and the owners want. Right now, we believe the players have more of the sports’ best interests at heart than the people running it.

That’s scary.

Has Manfred made any decisions since he took office that didn’t make you shake your head? And if the owners are putting him up to this, what does that say about them?

Heck, we have severe problems with the owners of our team.

This new CBA would be a good starting point in giving the players some say in picking the commissioner. Or perhaps having the owners keep that power but pick a former player for the job.

Something has to change for the good and for the future of the sport. And we hope the commissioner doesn’t ban us from buying tickets because we criticized him.