THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Here comes major league baseball, like it or not
The Mariners officially resume spring training today.
But…
Isn’t this the middle of summer?
Details, details.
But…
Didn’t MLB fight the last two months with its players about getting back together at all?
Tut-tut.
But…
Isn’t a 60-game season kind of ridiculous in a sport that calls itself a marathon, and rewards consistency over the long haul?
Stop whining over a few little things.
But…
Isn’t it dangerous to try playing again — and traveling all around this side of the United States — when the entire country is being ravaged by the coronavirus?
Hey, are you going to nit-pick EVERYTHING?
But…
Everything about this season and its risks seems to point toward a useless exercise that, even if the players and staff survive it, will turn out to be one big asterisk in baseball’s cherished record books, right?
What are you, a communist? Move to Russia if you hate baseball.
YES, SOME of those remarks I’ve repeated above are a bit tongue in cheek.
Not enough that they aren’t being discussed pretty seriously, though.
Baseball fans fall into two categories…
The lifetime junkies will take any games they can get, and you certainly fall into this category if (like me) you’ve been watching games in the Korea Baseball Organization.
How about those NC Dinos?
Who knew that raft of kids would blossom so fast?
The second group of fans — if I might generalize a bit here — pretty much has had a bellyful of baseball’s ugly, ongoing battle between players and owners.
Way back at the beginning of spring, when COVID-19 still sounded like the name and number of a rookie shortstop, even casual baseball observers latched on to the phrase “millionaires fighting with billionaires over money,” and everyone seemed to grasp that it would be an awful look for the sport.
That only got worse when people lost their jobs as the virus closed businesses, and Tampa Bay’s star pitcher Blake Snell summed up the financial situation underlying baseball’s labor dispute by saying: “I want to get mine.”
Baseball was NEVER going to come out of the battle between players and owners looking good (or even slightly respectable), but somehow everyone involved in this mess managed the impossible…
They made it worse.
And as a bonus, the two sides — who truly loathe each other despite having made boatloads of money by their marriage in this sport — will be at each others’ throats again when the current collective bargaining agreement expires following the 2021 season.
That’s gonna be as much fun as root canal surgery in the midst of an Ebola outbreak.
AS FOR the Mariners, well…
It would be unseemly to complain about your own roster or development problems when the whole country is suffering with health and financial woes.
But the truth is that Seattle, which is in the middle of what (so far) looks like a successful plan to build a contending team around young players that have been acquired or drafted, will take a bigger hit than some other franchises.
A number of key players — like outfielders Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriquez, along with starting pitchers Logan Gilbert and George Kirby — were ticketed to start the 2020 season in the minors, with an eye to bringing them to Seattle if they produce the expected success.
Three or four relievers fall generally into that same category.
Now, however, youngsters throughout the system (notably 18-year-old shortstop Noelvi Marte) will not get a full season of development at any level.
Players close to the big-league level, like Gilbert, won’t get much competitive pitching.
Although the Mariners have put talented kids like Gilbert and others on their 60-man roster (beyond 40, it’s considered a “taxi squad”), it would be silly to give them just a few weeks of action in the majors — thus starting the clock on their service time.
It’s likely that we won’t see anyone from this gifted crop of kids (other than the rookies who already are set for the opening day lineup) until next year.
In that sense, it will be like this year never happened.
Of course, if the Mariners suddenly shocked the world and found themselves in a pennant race near the end of this short season…
All logic might be discarded.
Just another reason that this year has been, and will be, a screwball affair.
So…
PLAY BALL!!
Email: scameron@cdapress.com
Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.
Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball, once per month during the offseason.