The Misplayed Easy Pop Up Damaging Major League Baseball
May 29th, 2017. Nationals versus the Giants.
Hunter Strickland was facing Bryce Harper on the top of the eighth inning while down 2-0. The very first pitch hits Harper directly, prompting a brawl. To the average viewer, this was random, unexpected, and has no reason to happen. But to the advanced and invested viewer, this was expected, anticipated, and did not disappoint. I’ll come back to this later.
Major League Baseball is in serious trouble, and this is while missing the easiest layup handed to them since the magical 1998 season. Before we talk about now, we have to rewind a bit back to 1994.
1994 arguably was when MLB’s grip as the second-most popular league in North America started slipping, and before you know it what became a national sport dwindled into a money-making regional sport. The money was indeed there, but the hate against what had transpired was also prevalent. 1994 saw a competitive season which featured the New York Yankees, the Montreal Expos, and the Chicago White Sox at the top. Ken Griffey Jr. and Matt Williams were chasing the home run record, Tony Gwynn was pursuing .400, it had been a great season full of storylines. But then the strike happened because of greed and because of the complete disconnect between players and owners; and baseball struggled to recover the fans, even with Cal Ripken Jr.’s epic record-breaking night in 1995.
It required a wild magical 1998 which saw the home run chase between multiple players, the Chicago Cubs actually pursuing a playoff spot, the New York Yankees becoming world-destroyers, the rise of the Boston Red Sox, and of course final month of the regular season which saw McGuire and Sosa battle each other for the home run record. Baseball was essentially saved by these two players as the games were bringing excellent ratings, but who knows how much longer the recovery would have lasted had it not been for the Roger Maris chase.
Today, baseball has been healthy even if its not as strong as its peak decades and even during the 80s and 90s. There are many reasons why baseball’s profits and national spotlight don’t exactly match, but MLB has chosen to accept this fate and not make any major changes to try to appeal to more mainstream fans. However this pandemic was providing them the ultimate opportunity: in the midst of tragedy become the first and only sports league to be shown on television, to elevate a battered and saddened United States, and to showcase a proper path to recovery and back to a sort of normality. Considering that baseball is a chess-like game with minimal actual contact between players, this was THE sport to rise up first. They even had a deal set back in March.
They had a deal that was agreed upon. There are literally hundreds of stadiums to choose from, from the Major Leagues all the way down to single-A minor league baseball sites. We have spring training facilities in Arizona and Florida, two notoriously sun-centric states with lower coronavirus numbers and better population density than harder-hit areas like New York and Chicago. You can even toss in Texas, Mexico, Canada, even South Korea for potential sites to help begin baseball again and represent America’s progress towards a brighter future; similar to what happened after 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing.
But then….greed kicked in.
The ownership got very greedy as it appeared the pandemic wasn’t going to end as quickly as anticipated, and it was going to be a while before fans were allowed back. The owners were not ready to also lose money alongside the players. Players had already agreed to prorated contracts for 2020, knowing their season was at least going to be cut in half. But now we see ownership wanting to pay them even less than the agreed-upon deal from March. The deal was actually so bad that the idea of skipping 2020 altogether became an actual possibility.
As of today’s writings, they remain trying to work out a proper deal that would make both sides happy. But at this point the damage has already been done. We honestly could have had baseball in mid-June and they would have dominated all of the sports headlines. They could have been the only conversation in sports media. MLB could have used this free space to re-introduce the sports world to their league, their superstars, their storylines, their controversies, and even some of their new ideas. Imagine having all of North America looking at you and only you for at least two months. It would have been a 1998-esque jolt, especially since we even have villains—the Houston Astros and to a lesser extent the Boston Red Sox. We could have toyed with the schedule and divisions and made some excellent matchups.
You could have created a new legion of fans to follow specific superstars and players and veteran legends, which would have led to invested viewers following these superstars and teams for the next several years. What makes baseball so great is that there are anticipations in a variety of ways. When Hunter Strickland was able to face off against Bryce Harper for the first time in years, the seasoned veteran knew what was going to happen. Baseball excels in this; thousands of story arcs to choose from. ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports would have had so many topics to cover. Instead, MLB is whether not coming back at all, or returning at around the same time as revamped NBA and NHL playoffs with the upcoming NFL season around the corner.
Major League Baseball already has issues reaching new fans, reaching previous fans, and reaching the mainstream consensus. It does not help that their contracts with all the major sports networks are far less primetime friendly then that of the other sports leagues except NHL and MLS. And this was a golden opportunity to be the dominant conversation like in the olden days. This was an opportunity to test the impact and value of a shorter season. Instead, we are seeing shades of the 1994 strike, and this is going to severely hurt the future of the sport moving forward. And a lot of this falls on Rob Manfred.
Rob Manfred has spent most of his tenure making bad decisions. Whether it’s the disastrous sale and firesale of the Miami Marlins, his awful support of the insane Montreal/Tampa Bay idea, his constant unnecessary desires to make wild changes to the game, his extremely weak punishments towards the Boston Red Sox and (especially) the Houston Astros, the lack of proper marketing of their superstars, the horrible mistreatment of the minor leagues, and now his inability to step up and demand an end to this terrible monetary stalemate between the owners and players, Manfred has really hurt the momentum of baseball in a variety of ways. Poor leadership has really hindered what could have been a true resurgence of baseball with all this new generation of talented athletes.
Major League Baseball had a golden opportunity, and absolutely blew it. Under less greed, better ownership, better leadership, and a better understanding of what’s at stake during one of the darkest periods in the history of the United States we’d be preparing for Opening Day right now. Instead, Major League Baseball has made the sports headlines for all the wrong reasons.