Baseball risks alienating more fans as labour dispute drags on

Congratulations to all of us! We passed a milepost this week in baseball’s collective bargaining talks. A fan’s group officially surfaced to have its say.

It was Tuesday when something called the National Fan’s Union wrote an open letter to commissioner Rob Manfred – placed in Bud Selig’s hometown newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel no less – and demanded a say in “how our money is spent,” requesting it somehow get a seat at the table.

I mean, not to poke fun at this. Anger at baseball’s collective bargaining talks is understandable. Let’s face it: we’ve had it with B.S. COVID. Putin. Convoys. Snow. Enough. Sports is supposed to take us away from all this, not contribute to it. Anger means people care; it beats the alternative. And while I tend to be dismissive of fan anger – sports fans talk a big game, but they always come back in one way or another – I wonder whether a cautionary tale isn’t necessary.

God knows history has never seemed more important than it is now on so many levels. And if regular-season games are lost, it will be the first time since 1994-95 that’s happened due to a labour conflict – the first time ever it’s happened due to an owner-initiated lockout.

The game has changed. How we consume the game as fans has changed. Might that lead to a changed reaction?

Greg Bouris started me down this road. Formerly the communications director for the Major League Baseball Players Association, Bouris suggested on Blair & Barker that the pace of change in baseball since the last CBA was signed was so drastic that it rendered that agreement dated even before the ink dried.

He has a point: in that time owners have gained more and more financially and the players have seen less and less of the financial pie. Franchise values have gone up; average salaries have stagnated below the inflation rate. WAR has gone from being a wonkish statistic that incited fistfights between old-school and new-school seam-heads to an accepted fact that could even be used to determine salary. And don’t get us started on the opener and the way the Tampa Bay Rays optioned Austin Pruitt on nine different occasions – or thereabouts – last season. Analytics has been a boon for teams in finding cheap labour, but it’s been no friend to the majority of players. Ain’t no fun in being fungible, folks.

And now look at us in that time. Look at us baseball fans and what we’ve gone through. COVID created a dislocation in every aspect of our lives, and in some ways I found baseball’s sloppy return from a pandemic shutdown more embarrassing than this labour fight. In addition, we’ve pretty much realized that the Houston Astros cheated their way to a World Series. Nice. And what did we bitch about when we weren’t bitching about the Astros? Pace of play. Three true outcomes. Shifts. All manner of fun-sucking stuff churned up by the game's chattering classes. And did we mention that sewer of a Hall of Fame ballot? I’ve still got burn marks on my hands from filling it out.

And that’s just looking back to the last CBA. Let’s go farther back to 1995, when the game came out of its strike after attempting to foist replacement players on the world. We are completely different sports consumers. Back then, we all assumed it was still important for fans to pack stadiums, aware that television was a big driver of payroll and revenue but unwilling to acknowledge the world was shifting. Bums in the seats are still a measure of financial health – they announce attendance figures at the ballpark, not TV ratings – but now there’s a whole on-line, streaming world out there that didn’t exist before. You can watch bits of every game every night without leaving the couch. Back then the idea that you’d be able to gamble legally on a ballgame inside the ballpark or that MLB would partner with a gaming outfit was laughable. Gambling was – before steroids, and don’t worry we’re getting there – the game's third rail. Now we’re doing it on an app. In the ballpark. Minor league baseball? It’s been gelded by technology and cost-efficiency and year-round training facilities.

It seems quaint now, but one of the reasons that Cal Ripken, Jr.’s, consecutive games streak was so vital coming out of the strike was that it personified the day-to-day nature of the Majors. It became a focal point of TV coverage, and when he finally broke Lou Gehrig’s record on Sept. 6, 1995, it seemed to put the game back on schedule. There was a punch-the-clock aspect to it; a kind of blue-collar wholesomeness that was eventually revealed to be something else entirely. It emerged that Ripken became more insular as the streak went on, a separation growing between him and his Baltimore Orioles teammates.

But at least it wasn’t as much of a slog as watching Barry Bonds chase down and pass Henry Aaron. Yep ... here come the steroids.

If Ripken restored the game's biorhythms, the split-bill home run derby of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in 1998 put some sexiness into the game. It was one of the few times baseball crossed over into the wider popular culture the way the NBA and NFL now do routinely. It was perfect for TV, and we all took sides: I was a Sosa guy, because he seemed to embrace it while McGwire was moody and brooded. ‘Chicks Dog the Longball’ was baseball’s official marketing slogan. Guys sure got big suddenly but everybody was having so much fun.

It almost seemed unnatural.

This isn’t to re-litigate the steroid era. But it is to serve as a reminder that baseball’s return from the abyss of 1994 came at a cost.

We still don’t know when/how this dispute resolves itself but as the days have gone on, I’ve found myself wondering more and more about the concept of expanded playoffs. We know the owners want it; we know the sides have established parameters that strongly suggest it will happen with, likely, 14 teams. We also know that the Major League Baseball Players Association has stated publicly it won’t agree to expanded playoffs unless the owners agree to a fully paid, 162-game regular season. The owners, in turn, have said that’s off the table without an agreement by Monday.

They need to be careful, because of all the issues in these negotiations the only one that is easy for fans to digest is expanded playoffs. And if this does drag on longer, it’s really the only thing baseball can offer its fans as a reward for their patience. “Hey guys, we’re back!” might not be enough any more. “Hey guys, we’re back and your no-hope team has just seen itself get a shot at the playoffs!” is an easier sell.

Mostly, though, I think the commissioner, owners and players need to re-establish the calendar. I remember my former Sportsnet colleague Brian Burke talking about how important it was for the NHL to move heaven and earth to get back on its feet during the pandemic because the sport’s calendar at every level depended on the NHL returning to a normal business cycle. Fans, prospects, career minor leaguers, college and high school players – we all need Major League players and owners to make the calendar matter again. Developmentally. Competitively. Economically and yes, spiritually.

If you’re of a certain age, you know that much of what baseball has sold us since 1994-95 hasn’t been treated kindly by history, but most of us will give it a chance again because it’s a helluva game and we’ve not seen a generation of talent like this current one. Most of us will suck it up, put on the hip-waders and plough on through the B.S. But if this drags on, I wonder how many we’ll take with us. Been a long road, fellas. Something you might want to think about.

Jeff Blair hosts Blair & Barker as well as the Blue Jays post-game show on @Sportsnet 590/The Fan.