MLB vs Players Guild: The solution is SIMPLE

By Jesús Alaín Fernández /@ JesusLCA2017

Baseball is facing a hurricane of extra-sporting events these days. The age of steroids has been followed by a barrage of poisoned arrows that do little or no good to the passion of many.

Sign robberies, the pandemic, the disagreement between the MLB and the Union for the 2020 season, the changes in the balls seeking to modify the game strategies, the offense against auxiliary substances are only the most visible faces of this contest that as two belligerent camps has reached its peak with the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

Few are the points in which the concrete positions have transcended. And much less those that there are similar approaches on some question. Unfortunately, it is much more likely that we will not find any in which the parties have loosened positions to reach a midpoint where the most important thing is the game and its fan.

The time of service of the players, the arrival to free agency, the ceilings, salary floors and the increase of the ceiling for the luxury tax, the arbitration mechanisms, greater distribution between players of the league’s income, reduction in the pensions for retired players, elimination of qualified offers, modifications to the international signing period, the universal designated hitter, the expansion of the playoffs and even some crazy plan to change the divisional structure that would put an end to many years of tradition are some of the most discussed proposals and that have transpired that they are on the negotiating tables.

Although there are discrepancies, social maturity should prevail in all negotiations. And it seems that here they play with “kiddies”. Until the MLB official site he has changed its entire structure and the rosters of the teams and the photos of the active players are not visible. From then on we can imagine everything else.

The lockout implies that players do not have access to team facilities, to health insurance (the case of the Dodgers Andrew Toles always comes to mind here), to rehabilitation treatments supervised by the team’s work teams. franchises and more, much more. Some, like our Aroldis chapmanThey have taken it well as a joke, but for others it is an ordeal with the feet in the present and the face in the future.

In MLB history there have been 9 work stoppages. Four have come in the form of lockouts and five as player strikes. The last event had been 94-95, and from that we had to learn a lesson so as not to hurt the fanatic who is in the end the beginning and the end of everything.

They all do what they do for the “hobbyist,” and they all do it with the conviction that it is better now to reach agreements before February. In 2020 we stop seeing 30 or more days of baseball because of the disagreement between these two big boys who are the faces of the MLB and the Union, Manfred and Clark.

The negotiating parties should spend a couple of hours watching the 1999 Kevin Costner-starring movie called “For the Love of the Game”. Or take a walk through the “Field of Dreams”, or the Hall of the Immortals in Cooperstown and wonder there what those who have made baseball what it is today would want.