THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Baseball is back, despite the 'fools who run it'
Steve Cameron.
Baseball’s owners and players fought over every nickel, comma and nuance of “pre-arbitration.”
They fought and exchanged insults for 99 days under a lockout executed by MLB.
They fought and blamed each other, and threatened to cancel the entire 2022 season, even as attendance and TV viewership has threatened to sink below the “Celebrity Race to Sri Lanka.”
They fought as only millionaires and billionaires can do battle, with absurd remarks and tone-deaf statements from PR people that angered everyone from average fans to true baseball junkies.
They fought while they were busy cheating — claiming there would be no contact between clubs and players or discussion with agents — but then routinely breaking their own rules with behind-the-scenes preparation to add players for the coming season.
They fought with bitterness, too, which was predictable because the owners are mostly just rich, bullying blockheads who remind you of British colonial days in India — waiting on their “natives” to fetch afternoon tea.
These owners and players fought until angry, frustrated fans gave up, certain that there would be no big-league baseball this summer.
BUT THEN …
On Thursday, finally, one brave and towering individual did the impossible and hauled baseball back from the abyss.
What’s more, sadly, this savior couldn’t step forward to shush the squabbling parties in person, because …
He died almost 50 years ago.
True.
Baseball might handle almost everything else poorly, and often does.
Remember the 1941 quote from Hall of Famer Bill Terry …
“Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it.”
The game’s gurus prove Terry correct almost every day, and The Great Lockout of 2022 was just one more example of how to get things wrong.
But there was still one deep, glowing line in the sand they weren’t too dumb to fear.
Still one mistake so idiotic that even the sport’s current cast of dummies shrunk back from it.
The single, absolute public relations catastrophe that this sport — owners, players, executives, umpires, all the way to kids shining shoes in the clubhouse — could not afford was so, so obvious …
Remembering April 15.
There simply MUST be ballgames on that day, and everyone knew it.
This one had to be observed.
Period.
That’s the day baseball has been planning to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the sport’s color barrier — April 15, 1947.
NOTHING …
No petty battle over an international draft or even outright war over the luxury tax limits — could be allowed to ruin the celebration of a time when baseball did something right.
Jackie wouldn’t allow it.
Neither would America.
If these owners and players bickered so long that it became impossible to play major-league baseball on the anniversary of April 15, 1947, heaven knows when forgiveness would be possible.
If …
Ever.
There is enough fury over this lockout, anyhow.
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole, who is managing to put food on the table with a nine-year contract worth $324 million, more or less conceded that players might not be greeted with ticker-tape parades when the regular season opens on April 7.
“Maybe some people will go to the ballpark to tell us how they feel negatively,” Cole said. “That’s their right to do, as well.
“I will say that nobody wanted it to go this way.”
AH, THE obvious response to statements like that from Cole and others — both players and owners — would be to ask WHY this ugly spitball fight had to drag on as long as it did.
Everyone in baseball knew there were inequities, things that needed adjusting on both sides.
They’ve known it for two years, and done nothing.
Even when owners imposed the lockout, long stretches came and went with zero negotiating — let alone any progress.
Fans ultimately will come back, assuming baseball’s bosses get the message and make the game faster and more exciting (ban the shift, employ a pitch clock, etc.), and they do it soon.
Like next year.
In the meantime, we should all thank Jackie Robinson that we have baseball at all.
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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published weekly during the season.
Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”