By TIM BARTO
It’s February, a time when pitchers and catchers should be reporting to sunny southern climes for spring training, a benchmark that signals the baseball season is not far off.
The simple phrase “pitchers and catchers have reported” usually gives baseball fans butterflies in their stomachs, much like a middle school crush but without all the hormonal imbalances.
Yet, the well-groomed ballparks in Florida and Arizona are vacant this year due to a lockout, a defensive move by the billionaire owners to prevent an inevitable strike by their millionaire ballplayers.
And not too many people in the general public seem to notice …. or care. And Major League Baseball should take notice.
The countless dozen or so of you who put up with my public whining and gnashing of teeth in 2021, are well aware that I have given up on Major League Baseball over their decision to inject politics and “wokeness” into what used to be our national pastime. I want desperately to have my game back but, in a perverted twist of Michael Corleone’s now-famous line in (the still disappointing and utterly unnecessary) “Godfather III,“ just when I thought I was being pulled back in they push me away.
Major League Baseball lost viewers and followers in 2020 because it opted not to punish Houston Astros players who blatantly cheated, then thought it a good business decision to align with Black Lives Matter and their flag-kneeling minions.
In 2021, Commissioner Rob Manfred doubled down on his decision to alienate his fan base by pulling the All-Star Game from under Atlanta’s feet because the players’ union hierarchy and a few “woke” corporations considered the laws that the State of Georgia passed to keep their elections fair and honest to be blatant evidence of racism, and therefore unworthy to host the Midsummer Classic. (The Atlanta Braves, by the way, were still allowed to play their full season of home games and, in rare moment of justice, won the World Series over the Astros, for which Commissioner Manfred had to present the Braves the victor’s trophy.)
Baseball attendance is down. TV ratings are down. Merchandising is down. Sure, Covid was a factor in all that, but to put a halt to the season before it even begins, especially when fans are willing to forgive and return to the game, is not just stupid, it’s suicidal.
It’s like the commissioner, owners, and players had a Zoom call with Dr. Jack Kevorkian and asked him the best way to kill the goose who laid all those golden eggs that made the players millionaires and kept the owners in billionaire status.
This makes no sense. The economic arguments being made by both sides, center around their collective bargaining agreement. The CBA sets the rules for almost all financial aspects of the game, including minimum salaries, free agency, revenue sharing, and luxury taxes.
As a fan of the game – the game of baseball, that is – I would rather they concentrate on making the game more watchable. Three-and-a-quarter-hour games with an average of 17 strikeouts per game are boring. I can no longer argue with people who say the game is boring – because it is!
And now we have contrived rules: Designated hitters, extra innings starting with a runner on second base, defensive shifts that are completely ignored by hitters who refuse to try and hit a ball through the gaping hole on the other side of the diamond, video reviews that disrupt the flow of the game, and most recently the idea of using clocks to speed up the game – the game that for over a century and a half prided itself on being the only major sport without a clock.
The two sides seem to not care that Dr. Kevorkian is actually plunging that needle into the goose, as well as their collective arms.
Baseball should take a good, hard look at what just happened with the Winter Olympics. For various reasons, not the least of which was a totalitarian regime using the Games as a propaganda tool a’ la Nazi Germany in 1936, the 2022 Winter Olympics garnered the lowest TV ratings in history. It shows that American sports fans are willing to stay away from watching sports.
And it’s about time.
Tim Barto is Vice President of Alaska Policy Forum, and President of the Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks Booster Club.
