There Is Only One Way To Logically End This MLB Lockout: Lock Rob Manfred, Tony Clark, The Player Reps, And Owners In A Room And Don’t Let Them Out Until There’s A Deal
It's no secret now that we are in jeopardy of the beginning of the MLB season being pushed back and delayed, the start of spring training is almost certainly not going to start on time. Jeff Passan and all the other big MLB guys were tweeting about it yesterday after another non-productive meeting between both sides and even the reporters seem frustrated at the pace of these meetings. It's almost like nothing is being done at all and that the owners really don't care if they lose games or not. From the outside looking in it almost seems like they aren't trying hard enough. Why isn't there more being done to make sure we have baseball on time? It's going to be another massive black eye on the game if this drags on into the regular season and games are being lost for no good reason other than selfish money issues within the game. These meetings between the two sides are only what, an hour or two long? Why is more not being done to assure us that we will have baseball this year? It's like they're just meeting to say they met and just have a starring contest when they get in there and then wrap it up. This whole thing has been such a colossal failure by all parties involved. I hate it here.
Why isn't there someone saying "fellas, lets sit in a room for 8 hours and knock this thing out"? It's already an awful look for baseball, how about the commissioner of the sport sacks up and tells the owners and player reps "we're going to sit down and talk until we figure it out." Cage match situation, no one leaves until we've reached a new agreement or at least made progress. Get the lawyers involved, get some takeout menus, some snacks, give em some booze, bring your chargers and lets bang this thing out. It sounds painful but you'd hope both sides would be able to make up some ground. This meeting one, maybe two times a week thing is for the birds. They took off a whole week of the holidays and that was over a month ago, why on January 3rd was there not an urgency between the sides to say "hey boys, we got 6 weeks before pitchers and catchers report, lets get this thing going"? Instead there was nothing. Crickets. This is horrible for the game, absolutely horrible. They're one season removed from a 60 game season that was delayed not only because of the pandemic, because the owners and players couldn't come together on issues pertaining to how they were going to play the season. This sport is in such bad shape right now it's not even funny, and it seems like the owners don't give two shits.
Pitchers and catchers for some teams report in less than 2 weeks, 2 weeks! There is no more time for them to take days off in-between meetings. There is 0 sense of urgency between either side to get things done it appears and that sucks. It absolutely sucks. No wonder they can't get the youths into their game, no wonder they can't grow the game, MLB, the owners, and their fraud of a commissioner can't stop shooting themselves directly in the foot. It's pathetic that no deal has been reached yet. The second the CBA expired they should have been trying to get in a conference room somewhere to talk about it, instead they spent time taking players pictures off the MLB website and making sure we couldn't see Shohei Ohtani's face. They're past the point of risking losing games, whether it be spring training or regular season ones, they have to figure something out in the next few days if they want to keep the hope of a normal season alive, and I don't see it happening. What an awful time for baseball and it's fans.