**Opening Day 2016 Photo credit: Kollin Currie**

Baseball has a problem, and it’s not the pandemic, although that certainly doesn’t help. While the MLB and its Players Association squabble over the details of a labor agreement to potentially play at least a partial 2020 season, the fans are the ones being left in limbo.

While I’m not begrudging either side for wanting to negotiate, it’s time to face reality. If your fans turn on you, you’re done. Baseball already had an interest problem before the coronavirus turned world upside down. On the other hand, I would argue that the situation presents baseball with an opportunity, but only if both sides get their act together. There’s still time to do that and here’s how I think it could happen.

I’m a Baseball Fan

Before I go any further, I believe it’s important to admit your biases before moving forward with any argument. Baseball is my favorite sport, and I would like nothing more than to see them spend a large part of the summer and into fall playing games and deciding a champion. I’m not for the owners or the players. I come at this from the perspective of someone who just wants something that’s one reliable sign of summer in this craziness.

I would love to see them play a season in 2020, and it’s my assumption that both sides in the negotiations would like to see that as well in an ideal world. Obviously, for reasons I’ll go over and the rest of this post, this isn’t an ideal world for baseball, or any other industry for that matter. But I believe that regardless of whatever happens in the coming weeks with negotiations, both sides come at this from a perspective of wanting to play. They aren’t being difficult out of a desire to skip the 2020 season.

Reality Check

I think it’s important to speak to a couple of realities of the situation. One of them is related to the menace that is COVID-19. The other is arguably a bigger problem for the longer-term future of the sport. Being that it’s central to my overall position on this issue, let’s take the second issue first.

Baseball’s Fan Issue

Even before 2020 and the virus outbreak brought forth the very real possibility that any games played this season would be contested in empty stadiums, baseball had an interest problem. The fan base appears to be shrinking.

According to Baseball Reference, the last year during which season-to-season attendance grew for the MLB was 2014. The 2015 season was the last time average team attendance grew on a per game basis. Since 2014, overall attendance has fallen steadily, down by more than 5 million fans.

There’s an argument to be made that TV has made the viewing experience so good that people are less inclined to go to the ballpark, which entails paying for parking and the ticket. That’s before paying for a hot dog and maybe a program or souvenir. That’s a fair thought, so let’s explore that.

Of the four major sports, baseball, long considered America’s national pastime, ranks third out of the four major sports played in the U. S. and Canada in terms of television audience according to data from 2018. The league only ranks ahead of the NHL, which tends to have an appeal limited to certain regions of the country. I can admit that as someone sitting in Hockeytown, USA.

Any way you look at it, it wasn’t a great situation for baseball going into this, and it’s only going to get worse if they don’t play this year. Baseball is my first love, so I’ll be back. I increasingly wonder how many people like me are left.

Coronavirus Will Continue to Be a Thing

I’m sensitive to the fact that baseball players have family, and no amount of money is worth jeopardizing the health and well-being of those they interact with. Baseball players are entertainers. It’s fair to say they didn’t sign up for risking their health for the sake of providing a few hours the daily distraction. On the other hand, neither did the people working in grocery and hardware stores, garbage collectors and mail carriers. But I’ll say that it’s a bit of a different situation.

Sports are not an essential service that’s vital to the functioning of the society. If the developments with this virus itself cause us not to have baseball, football, basketball and hockey until we have a vaccine, I think that’s something Americans can understand.

There are also legitimate concerns over the resumption of sports in general. If one member of a team gets it, they would have to be isolated immediately and the rest of the team would need testing, as well as any other opponents they played recently. This would likely mean daily testing.

Given the testing situation in the U.S., this could present an obstacle. Testing of professional athletes can in no way take away from the ability of a member of the general population to get a test if they need one. This is something I think everyone would agree with on public relations and moral grounds.

However, regardless of whether it’s actually logistically possible to pull this off, that doesn’t seem to be the point of contention that’s been publicly reported for baseball. So, let’s look at what they are arguing over.

Money Makes the World Go Round

As it stands now, the main concern for both sides in this negotiation appears to be dollars and cents. Let’s go over the sequence of events briefly. ESPN’s Jeff Passan lays out the issue fairly well.

Back in March, the MLB owners and their Players Association agreed to a prorating of salaries for 2020. This would mean players would only be paid for the games that are played. Sounds fair enough. The issues started to arise when it became clear that those games that were played will likely to have no fans in the stands to start with. On top of that, even when fans do return, it’s unlikely that the stadiums will be allowed to operate at anywhere near capacity.

The players still ideally want their prorated salaries. Meanwhile, the owners have proposed a 50-50 revenue split with the players, arguing that without that parking, concession, and ticket revenue mentioned earlier, the revenue drops by 40%.

Moreover, under the owners’ proposal, things would operate on a sliding salary scale. Players who make the least would receive the largest portion of their prorated salaries for an 82-game season with players who make more money earning significantly less. For a superstar like Miguel Cabrera who would normally make $30 million, his prorated salary would be just over $15 million. On the sliding scale proposed by the owners, his salary would be just under $5 million in 2020. Let’s compare that to his teammate Christin Stewart, who makes just over the league minimum right now. His prorated salary with fans would have been $289,100. Under the new proposal, it’s $260,120.

The players don’t agree to this on principle, figuring they already have a deal, but what’s interesting is that the players who are the biggest attractions would be taking the biggest pay cut. Any agreement they would come to would probably involve meeting somewhere in the middle, but it’s interesting to look at.

Another piece of the players’ concern here stems from the fact that they feel that any change from prorated salaries could represent the imposition of a salary cap, which is something the union has been opposed to for quite a while and led to the strike of 1994. I understand this is a major issue, but as I've heard on TV so many times over the past several months, we're in a truly unprecedented situation. Therefore, both sides may have to look at things they wouldn't normally agree to.

At the same time, this exceptional situation isn't going to last forever. You could put a clause in any agreement that says something to the effect of:

The MLB and the union agree that these measures should only be in force only until such time as there are no limitations on how many spectators can enter the ballpark at the state and local level.

I'm not a lawyer, but I did watch Legally Blonde. Therefore, by proxy, I've been to Harvard Law. And now that I've offended every actual Harvard Law graduate, let's move on.

There’s Still Time

For some reason, people are convinced that this week is the be-all and end-all for negotiations, and there won’t be a season if they can’t get started by the Fourth of July. While it would be nice to have baseball back by then, I heard one radio interview this morning saying that the real deadline for the season to start would be more like August 1, with play wrapping up around Thanksgiving. Admittedly, that’s hard to envision in cold weather cities like Detroit, but there are other options still.

Why are we stuck on 82 games? People think so-called baseball purists won’t accept anything less than that. Realistically, as long as everyone is playing under the same rules, I’m fine with running a champion a champion if they play 50 you are-season games. Sparky Anderson used to say he knew what kind of team he had after 40, so that would be okay by me.

The only thing I think doesn’t make sense is if they did a one and done like March Madness. Baseball isn’t set up for that. I already hate the one-game wildcard thing they do because the rest of the year, you play at least three games against every opponent you face.

Why Baseball Needs to Come to an Agreement

The owners and the Players Association would be best served to come to an agreement for multiple reasons. Two of these make sense from a business standpoint. One is a bit more emotional, but important nonetheless.

The Money Is Still Pretty Darn Good

In my day job, I spend a lot of time looking at financial reports. This includes employment numbers. Lest those involved in professional baseball become divorced from the reality that’s confronting everyday Americans, let’s take a look at a couple statistics. As of last week, the unemployment rate in this country was 14.5%. Up until about mid-March, this rate was about 3.5%.

Meanwhile, if we look at average wages for February (the last employment report before the effects of the coronavirus on the economy were really felt), the average yearly wage in the U. S. was roughly $51,000. I’ve chosen to throw out April. While wages increased quite a bit in that month, it had to do with many low-wage workers losing their jobs as a result of state shutdowns. That means even the lowest paid players are making more than five times the salary of the average American. Additionally, many of those who are still working have taken pay cuts of their own.

I said at the beginning that I wasn’t taking a position with the owners or for the players. While talking about the players’ salaries, it’s only fair to acknowledge that the owners are billionaires whose personal fortunes won’t be to hurt by having to suffer a financial loss for one season. You also still have TV money as well as online merchandise sales.

I acknowledge that baseball is a business, and ultimately, the purpose of any business is to make money. In addition, many of these owners and players take their money and put it back into charitable organizations and even other businesses which employ people in the areas where they play. But I really hope that if they don’t play this season, the reason won’t be about solely about money.

The Only Game in Town

If the MLB gets started, it has the chance to win mind share and goodwill by being the only game in town for a while. This could be especially important for a sport that lags in popularity behind the NFL and NBA.

I know golf is coming back soon, but if you’re not fully invested, that can be dreadfully boring to watch on TV. I know NASCAR’s fast-paced, but the cars are going in circles. Yes, I know people say baseball is boring, but in comparison to these other sports, there’s constant action of some sort.

With a captive audience desperate for competition, a whole new generation of fans could be introduced to baseball. That’s an opportunity that neither party in the negotiations should pass up.

The World Could Use Baseball

It’s no secret that it’s been a long couple of months. First, there’s the issue of the virus, which nearly everyone is impacted by in one way or another. We also seem to be in a time of increasing division and unrest as a country. It’s been said in the past that sports has the power to heal.

It doesn’t work as a vaccine. It’s also no replacement for open and honest communication regarding how we're all feeling, so that if we can’t imagine ourselves in another’s shoes, at least we can attempt to understand where they’re coming from in order to be allied in a flight for meaningful, positive change.

However, baseball and all sports serve as a good starting point for finding common ground. I was on a Zoom call with a friend of mine who’s local, but the other people in the group are from England, France and Germany. Behind me, I have a poster of Comerica Park above my bed. The person in Germany left the frame and came back with a hat sporting the Olde English D. It can be the little things that bring you together. We may not agree on everything, but we also aren’t very different. We were all kids once who played kids’ games.

It would be nice if the boys of summer came back so that for a few hours each day, we could feel like kids again. Here’s hoping!

writergraham.com