Perspectives: To Baseball, Thanks… For Nothing
The NBA has a plan to return.
Major League Baseball has nothing.
The NHL has a plan to return.
Major League Baseball has nothing.
The NFL has a plan to return.
Major League Baseball? Not a thing.
In the world of baseball, we have the owners and the players bickering. They each are trying to leverage whatever they can to get more out of the other. They think they can win. They can’t.
They’re both losing.
And it’s ugly and its embarrassing and it’s terrible.
The players and the owners are the stewards of the game. They have a huge responsibility. Their responsibility is to maintain the integrity of the sport – to keep the sport vibrant…
To keep the sport alive…
And to bring the sport to the fans.
They have failed us all in this regard.
Failed. Us. All.
As we are seeing, right now, the world is moving very fast, extremely fast…things are changing quickly, extremely quickly.
Baseball just might be negotiating itself out of business. By the time these stewards are ready to support and play the game, there might not be a game worth playing. After a while, even the most die-hard fans will throw up their hands and say, “Enough.” The casual fans will easily find other things to do with their time. They already have.
I know that the people who run baseball believe that the fans will always come back. And they do. Or, at least they have, until now. The fans always come back – until they don’t.
Until they don’t.
The millionaires and billionaires of baseball have gained their fame and wealth on people like me, like us, all of us, who have supported the game – the game we love. We invest our emotions in the sport… in the teams, the players, the games. But when we invest, we invest because we expect to get something in return. If there is no return, it makes no sense to give that investment at all.
At some point, we have to ask, “What is the sport, Major League Baseball itself, giving us?”
In the last year, Major League Baseball has given us arguments, bickering, and cheating scandals. In the last year, we have seen baseball’s plan to gut the minor leagues. The headlines baseball makes all have to do with greed – greed for wins, greed for success, and greed for championships.
What baseball hasn’t given us is a game.
There is no game.
As the millionaires and the billionaires argue, they hurt the game on a very real and significant level. By the time they agree to come back, there might not be enough interest in the game to even come back to.
A fan can only take so much.
The Baseball Stewards have their riches because of us. All of us. People like you and me. But, a fan can only take so much.
I love the game, but I am finding it more and more challenging, with each passing day, to love the teams and the players.
The talk now is that there won’t be a 2020 season at all.
Amazing.
They don’t get it.
Millions of people have been hurt by the fact that they refuse to figure this out – to make a plan to bring the game back to us.
Baseball must give us our game back. The owners and players alike are holding our game hostage because of their greed.
They think the fans will always come back.
And they do.
Until they don’t.
