In the next few days, perhaps within 24 hours, the owners will make a final offer to the Major League Baseball Players Association. The union will counter one last time. After three months we’ve memorized all the steps in this miserable dance. Although Rob Manfred told ESPN his next move will be “significant,” there’s no guarantee of a negotiated settlement: the commissioner could be left with the doomsday option of imposing a 48-game schedule.
If so, it’d be a take-it-or-leave-it dictum, not just to the players but to the fans as well. The folks who’ve been hungering for baseball this summer will be rewarded - Manfred promises a season one way or another. But at what cost? It’s been a joyless stretch, to be remembered only for its mean-spiritedness, most of it festering on Twitter.
The longer the talks drag on, the larger the army of followers who’ve said, no more, no thanks. They’ll have moved on, even if baseball returns for those handful of games. It’ll feel like an extended exhibition schedule, balls and strikes signifying nothing. A hot streak or two and, presto, you’re a first-place club. Who could possibly take it seriously?
But hold on, baseball has one last bullet to win back the public – October. An exciting postseason might go a long way to dressing the wounds. It’s happened before in 1995, which is why Manfred and union chief Tony Clark at least agree on an expanded 16-team format.
Not only will it generate more TV revenue, but the inclusion of more teams and more markets will theoretically keep more fans engaged. That is, the ones who’ve stuck it out this long. It’s a gamble, alright. Social media is currently overrun with anti-MLB sentiment and rightfully so: baseball has squandered its chance to be the first major sport to return to a divided country, consumed by its petty squabbles over – what else – money.
But that was the case after the players struck in 1994, too. The walkout started on August 12, forced the cancellation of the World Series and rolled over into spring training with a failed experiment of replacement players.
The two sides didn’t agree until April 2. Spring training was boiled down to a mere 23 days and the season was shortened to 144 games. Baseball paid a steep price for its internal war, as the fans left in droves. Attendance in both leagues decreased by 20 percent. And despite fielding the majors’ best team in ’94, the Yankees’ gate ranked only 14th overall in the summer of ’95.
That was the point former commissioner Fay Vincent made to me in Sunday’s column: “no one’s learned their lesson” from the strike. Most fans don’t root during labor disputes. They instead vote with their feet. They avoid the ballpark.
But October was a brave new world. The playoffs were expanded for the first time since 1969 to include a wild card. Hello Yankees: they went 22-6 in September to clinch the spot on the final day of the regular season. They squared off against the Mariners, who’d lost Ken Griffey Jr. for most of the summer with a broken wrist, falling 12 ½ games behind the Angels as late as August 2.
But the M’s mounted an historic comeback, thanks to Griffey’s return and Lou Piniella’s leadership in the dugout. And what a Division Series it was, going all the way to the last game, last inning, last pitch before it was decided.
Every Yankees historian knows how it ended. They can trace every step of Griffey’s first-to-home sprint, scoring the series-deciding run on Edgar Martinez’s double off Jack McDowell in the 11th inning of Game 5. The loss hurt the Yankees so deeply I saw Buck Showalter cry in his office.
Still, that series not only laid the groundwork for the Yankees’ rise as an American League superpower, it helped baseball restore the lost goodwill with the public. It’s what Manfred is counting on a quarter of a century later. As Vincent himself, said, “Fans end up missing (the games). People do love baseball.“
As commissioner, Manfred has the right to structure the playoffs as he sees fit. He’ll need to do more than simply hand the keys to October to 16 clubs. The first-place finishers will have to be rewarded; byes will have to be strategically engineered to make sure the industry’s beasts don’t trip and fall too early.
Let’s be honest: the last thing MLB needs is for the Yankees and Dodgers to be eliminated in the first round and for, say, the Marlins to still be alive in the NLCS. If baseball is to return to its good graces, it needs gripping TV, not two lousy teams in the World Series. Derek Jeter may be an owner in Miami but somewhere in his heart he understands the Yankees have to be part of winning back America.
Because let’s also be clear about the ticket buyers’ anger: they can’t even get refunds for the un-played games in April and May, not without a steel cage match with the clubs. All they’ve seen is the edge-of-the-cliff negotiations between Manfred and Clark – brinksmanship when compromise was so badly needed.
Who knows, maybe this final round of talks will awaken the better angels in both men’s souls. Perhaps, as Manfred has promised, the owners come back with something more convincing than 48-game, pro rata salaries. Maybe the players come down off 89 games.
Maybe. But don’t hold your breath, not yet. It’s the two parties who should be nervous, not us. Their reckoning is coming in October.
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Bob Klapisch is a freelance columnist who covers the Yankees and Major League Baseball for NJ Advance Media.
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Down to its last breath, MLB better hope for an exciting October - nj.com
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