It’s been almost 11 months since Spring Training shut down last year, and, well, here we are again. MLB has asked the Players Union to delay the season by a month and cut the number of games down to 154; the union, foreseeing a loss of leverage should they even open negotiations, has declined discussions. The federal government has now weighed in, suggesting that baseball — hey would you look at that! — delay the season by a month to get everyone vaccinated.
Other sports are proceeding as normally as they can under the circumstances: the Super Bowl will take place on Sunday, the NBA is operating with limited fans in the cities that allow fans, and occasionally I see people tweet about hockey, think “Maybe I’ll watch some hockey,” and then do anything else. To coin a phrase, nature is healing.
But there are some ominous signs even there. The Kansas City Chiefs’ team barber received a positive COVID test in the middle of a haircut, causing the two players whose hair he’d cut in the previous day to go on the COVID reserve list for five days pending their own test results. In January alone, the NBA postponed 21 games for COVID-related reasons. And the NHL is having its own spate of postponed games and players who test positive — the Sabres have postponed all their games through the 8th, and the Devils now have 17 players on the COVID list.
I’ll be honest here: I had no idea what was going on with the NHL and the pandemic, but I figured a quick Google search would turn something up. Nailed it!
So in that environment, it’s probably the right move to delay the season until you’re sure everyone can get vaccinated. Because all of these postponements and positive tests will keep happening, and keep happening, and there’s no avoiding it. This is what the world is, and the best thing to do is avoid it if possible.
So that makes the union the bad guy, right? If Thing A needs to happen, and Group B is preventing it, then Group B is the problem.
But on the other hand, why can’t the union just accept the delay? What’s stopping them? Well, the fact that if they did the right thing and allowed the season to be delayed, the owners would use it against them.
(There was a viral Twitter thread a couple days ago saying that if the two sides didn’t come to an agreement then the owners would be able to renegotiate every part of the deal, but the author later acknowledged that he got that part wrong. Good to know!)
If the players allowed the schedule to be shortened in exchange for a universal DH and expanded playoffs, they’d have nothing to bargain with this offseason when the collective bargaining agreement is up. The next CBA would be lopsided in favor of the owners, because the players would have nothing to offer in exchange for the concessions they need.
So what’s the answer? Simple: the owners need to go back in time and negotiate in good faith. If they did that, then the union could have some faith that giving concessions wouldn’t come back to bite them later on. Problem solved!
Other than that, what can they do? I honestly don’t know. Unless some external factor forces a different decision, they’ll continue with the season as planned and hope everything goes well. Sure, it won’t go well, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. Today, everyone is trapped in the bad decisions they’ve been making for years.