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Monday is the MLB-stated deadline to have a labor agreement in place to not lose games for the 2022 regular season.
Thus you would think that rhetoric like this would not be helpful toward such an agreement:
MLB today indicated a willingness to miss a month of games and took a more threatening tone than yesterday, sources briefed on the day’s first meeting between MLB and the Players Association tell me, @Ken_Rosenthal and @FabianArdaya. Full context of conversation not yet known.
— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) February 28, 2022
I cannot express how upset and disappointed I am to see this sort of thing come from the owners’ side. So here, let me allow a couple of others to do that:
I think owners want to break the union once and for all, and they could sacrifice money to do it. They see this as their chance. I don't think they care. It can get very bad, Chuck. https://t.co/wxNo41mdpY
— Bernie Pleskoff (@BerniePleskoff) February 28, 2022
And our SB Nation friends at Over The Monster sum up the last week of negotiations quite well:
I can't express enough how much contempt these people have for the game. If you ever get even a small urge to defend any of these owners, please just remember how big of an embarrassment this whole process has been, and whose shoulders that falls on.
— OverTheMonster (@OverTheMonster) February 28, 2022
That’s a strong word, “contempt,” but I do think it fits here. This is a scorched-earth policy, owners seemingly not caring what damage they are doing to the game, its future, and we the fans who care so much about seeing baseball back on the field. I’ve been posting wrapups of each day of negotiations in Jupiter, Florida, at the end of the day but this news seemed important enough for a separate article.
Oh, and there’s this:
Probably should have sent this before the day they were supposed to renew. https://t.co/alTgJxQ3dh
— Sara Sanchez (@BCB_Sara) February 28, 2022
There had been an online movement over the last few days to get people to cancel before the renewal date today; it’s impossible to know how many did, but based on anecdotal reports on social media, the number is likely considerable.
I wish baseball were being run by people who didn’t do everything in their power to alienate their customers, we the fans. But that appears to be where we stand in the early afternoon of what’s supposedly the “last day” to prevent loss of games in 2022.
The players have stood strong and united and I back them. I’ll still post an article on all of today’s news whenever things wrap up.
Developments, awaiting, etc.