Update: The MLB and the Player’s Association reached an agreement on a new labor agreement on March 10th, 2022 and the lockout has officially ended.
For the second time in three years and for the seventh time since its schedule expanded to 162 games in 1962, the Major League Baseball season will almost certainly be shorter than anticipated. The news comes after a spokesperson on the behalf of the MLB’s owners said that regular season games would begin to be slashed if there was no agreement between players and owners on a restructured collective bargaining agreement by February 28. That deadline would have allowed for four weeks of Spring Training before the scheduled Opening Day date of March 31. Simply put, a collective bargaining agreement is the agreement between the player’s union and the owners on how a sports league is run. When it expires, the teams lose rights to their players until a new CBA is agreed upon. Despite several days of negotiation right ahead of the deadline giving people hope that the two sides would reach an agreement at the eleventh hour, the MLB Players Association struck down an offer from the league’s owners on March 1st. The result is yet another work stoppage for a sport that desperately can’t afford it.
Lockouts and strikes have happened before. Lockouts and strikes that have eaten into the season have happened before. Lockouts in the digital age have happened before, albeit almost exclusively in the NHL, which has always been a relatively small league. However, lockouts rarely carry as much weight as the current one in the MLB does. The last two work stoppages in the MLB occurred in 2020 and 1994, where the league was put into a situation out of their control with the COVID-19 pandemic, and then managed to make it worse on themselves after a disagreement on salary and games to be played that year left the MLB as the last major North American league to return to play after COVID-19. The 2020 disagreement served as a prelude to the current state of affairs between the two parties. Unable to sync up while the whole world waits. The 1994 work stoppage was a strike, where the players initiated the stoppage in play, unlike the owner initiated lockout currently unfolding. Coming into the strike, the MLB was arguably the biggest sports league in the continent, still holding its national pastime status over the NFL. However, the stoppage shifted the casual and young audience away from baseball, and led it to become overtaken by the NFL, and arguably falling behind the NBA in terms of national popularity. While the steroid era brought baseball back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the fallout after players were found to be using steroids set the MLB back to square one for the better part of the 2000s and 2010s. The MLB’s fanbase was predominantly old, and those that were young were mostly casual.
However, a minor miracle occurred in the later half of the 2010s: Energetic, young, fun players who were also good enough to become stars of the game. When Fernando Tatis Jr. was named the cover athlete of the annual MLB The Show title in 2021, it was the cementing of baseball beginning to return back to its heyday. That same year saw Shohei Ohtani do something that hadn’t been done in around a century: be an elite pitcher and an elite hitter. Ohtani won the MVP unanimously, and despite the language barrier presented by coming over from Japan, was able to captivate a young audience and establish a newfound casual following. The hope was that the MLB could turn this new flock of casual fans into loyal fans, just like they did in the 70s and 80s. How does a league do that? Being available. Not playing games indefinitely is the exact opposite of being available. It’s more than the lack of onscreen product. It’s the lack of news in the offseason, the lack of player interaction that can be created by the infinite amount of resources at the disposal of MLB teams. In the social media age, where excitement is everything, taking the hype generated around the 2021 season and being unable to build off of the momentum generated by it is simply a failure. At its most pivotal point for the future of the league, the MLB failed, and people are noticing.
“As a more casual fan I’d say I’m annoyed by it,” said Joey Boyd, a student at Magruder High School. “I enjoy going to the games and there not being any baseball for the foreseeable sucks.” Boyd captures what baseball is capable of, too. He attended the 2019 National League Wild Card Game in Washington, a game that kickstarted the Nationals’ magical run that led to a World Series title. Boyd refers to that game as “an exorcism” of past failures and heartbreak, and that magical night in early October “cemented [his] love for the Nationals and the sport of baseball.” Without games, these magical moments will be unable to occur. The next generation of fans will never be exposed to the game early on. Most importantly, the casual fan will turn the TV to other summertime sports, like NASCAR, playoff hockey and basketball, the MLS, and other leagues.
The Steroid Era saved baseball after the strike in 1994, but what’s going to save baseball now? One thing the MLBPA and the MLB has agreed on is implementing the Designated Hitter in both the American and National leagues, but will the added offense that supposedly comes with it be enough to attract the fans back? Boyd says that the universal DH alone “won’t be enough“ to repair the league’s image, while Byron Barksdale, sophomore at Magruder, simply said “Nah.”
The general consensus on what can save baseball is marketing. Currently, the best player in baseball is Mike Trout. However, the MLB has failed to market him to the levels that, say, the NBA promotes Giannis Antetokounmpo. This is due in part to the milquetoast personality Trout carries, but only recently has the MLB begun pushing to market their expressive superstars. Thanks to the lockout, however, the MLB loses all rights to player’s images, meaning the longer this goes on, the longer the MLB has to go without marketing their game using the people that play it, continuing the spiral the MLB seems to be on.
Not much about the future of baseball is certain. When, eventually, the two sides do unite is unknown, and what exactly will be the contents of the new CBA is anyone’s guess. One thing is for certain: the longer the lockout goes on, the more baseball loses.
Article by Alex Sheesley of Magruder High School
Photo courtesy of Unsplash