THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Baseball, come back — for fans like Matthew

Yo, baseball…

Enough is enough.

Make a deal.

Now!

Assuming the health of all involved can be reasonably protected, find a way to be playing after the Fourth of July.

Your millions of fans are no longer really angry. They’re reaching a far worse point.

Quite soon now, they just won’t give a damn.

My stepson, Matthew, is a bona fide sports junkie — and a guy who normally would hang around for the last pitch of a Kansas City Royals game if the score were 8-1.

But…

Here’s his take on the financial squabble that’s keeping MLB and its players association from reaching an agreement to squeeze in half a season, plus playoffs and the World Series?

“I don’t really care,” he said. “If they work it out, fine.

“But if they don’t, there’s lots of other sports that will be back. The NBA and the NHL re-worked their entire structures to resume playing.

“So if baseball can’t…

“Well, the sport is losing young people already. Why not just go ahead and make it worse?”

MATTHEW will be 23 next month.

He belongs to a generation that doesn’t necessarily see baseball as our “national pastime.”

Like most of his peers, he’s busy, but willing to be attracted to more action and better presentation.

If that’s offered by something other than baseball...

So be it.

Matthew’s loyalty to a sport that gave him a lifetime memory — the Royals’ triumph in the 2015 World Series — is waning by the day.

The odd part, though, is that he isn’t angry at the Royals, an organization that has continued to pay its staff and minor leaguers through this pandemic, and has guaranteed its farm system employees full salary through August.

(Note: The Mariners are another of the clubs that has refused to eliminate personnel just to protect short-term revenue. Operations staff have taken some pay cuts to avoid layoffs, and minor leaguers are protected through this season.)

No, Matthew has reached this shoulder-shrugging stage because, like a majority of fans nationwide, he sees this “billionaires vs. millionaires” tug-of-war — at a time when roughly 35 million Americans have lost their jobs — as just plain stupid.

And again, like most baseball fans, he has trouble seeing any kind of happy ending.

It’s stunning, really, that the executives trying to hash out some sort of deal to create a half-season of baseball seem to be so incredibly tone-deaf.

Are they so busy listening to their own voices that they can’t hear those hundreds of millions of fans like Matthew?

You know, the ones saying that a little pain this year – when the whole world is suffering – would be a wise sacrifice for the future.

If MLB and its players are fighting just for the hell of it, they’ve picked a terrible time.

As marketing people would say, the optics are awful.

THE NATION is on its knees, so when we hear filthy rich owners claiming to be losing a little money in game-day revenue, while fighting with ballplayers who want to sound like workers in a meat-packing plant, well…

Who’s going to cast a sympathy vote for anyone in this scrap?

It’s worth remembering that if opening day NEXT season goes off on schedule, everyone in this unseemly drama will be just six months away from another battle — following expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Does baseball, which is struggling to maintain its status in current society, really need to whack its supporters with two labor battles in less than two seasons?

The answer is pretty obvious.

To be honest, both owners and players can make some valid points about what this year’s half-season should look like — and what the pay scale might be.

In fact, this is exactly the type of situation in which each side needs to hear the other’s points — and find a compromise.

Memo to baseball: You’ve been losing fans to other sports, and that was BEFORE the coronavirus.

You need to hash out a deal and stop the bleeding.

Like, yesterday.

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.