MLB work stoppage: Look for an end to it in a month

All right then. Major League Baseball and their players’ union have now had a good post-holiday burp, and have begun negotiations for working up an MLB season for American baseball fans. They resumed talking about a new collective bargaining agreement on January 13, and pretty much got nowhere on their first day. This continues the latest instance of an MLB work stoppage. The list of such stoppages is not long, but now involves, definitely, a non-zero number, to borrow from recent political language.

It’s pretty much all as though the MLB owners are still really, really annoyed with Curt Flood.

The MLB work stoppage comes at a time when the sport of baseball is millions below its peak potential.

That is, even though Flood would be astonished now at the size of the golden calf being broken up among the owners and players.

As I suggested recently, the current work stoppage entails a battle between the super-rich and the regular-rich. This wasn’t a phrase tossed off casually. What I meant by that is, first, the current minimum MLB salary (2021) is $570,500. Second, the average MLB salary is now more than $4 million. I could go on with comparisons only to figures from this century, but what’s the point?

Most knowledgeable people are also aware of the fact that MLB owners are, largely, billionaires. Their wealth on paper keeps going up, but still, we have yet another, owner-driven MLB work stoppage.

Common sense would suggest average working stiffs wouldn’t be interested in a battle between plutocrats and guys who can throw, hit, or field a fast-moving ball, but only drive Mercedes.

Nope, Americans love athletic talent, and so we will have quite a lot of comment about these negotiations.

Let’s try to boil down the issues to a couple of sentences, which most fans couldn’t care less about since they just want to see baseball. Still, the players’ union seemingly wants to shove some of the big money down to the middle tier of players who don’t get $300 million contracts. For the owners’ part, they oppose such changes as dropping eligibility for free agency from the end of six years to five because that would hurt competitive balance, as though 75 percent of the owners actually care.

The players also want the DH in both leagues, reportedly, because let’s hear it for old hitters, and pitchers are overpaid, or something. An MLB work stoppage is very complicated.

The one reported suggestion from the owners that should get some traction is to “award draft picks” (plural?) to teams that don’t “manipulate” the service time of “top prospects,” per Jeff Passan.

Definitions rule, people.

That aside for the moment, though, this MLB work stoppage will all likely take until at least mid-February to work out, but it will be worked out. And here’s why…

As some fans know, the last of eight interruptions of MLB play or front office official function was in 1994. Those under 35 likely don’t know that MLB work stoppage wiped out 938 games, the entire postseason, and basically removed the Montreal Expos from Canada. It was the fifth strike among eight stoppages.

However, the reason for both sides to work out the current problem lies buried in a table of MLB total attendance.

Between 1992 and ’93, MLB attendance jumped by nearly 15 million fans, partly because of the two new teams in Florida and Colorado. Those teams accounted for about half of the new tickets sold. Most of the rest were sold in Toronto and Philadelphia by the teams that met in the ’93 World Series. The final attendance in 1993 was 70,257,938.

The players weren’t stupid, and stopped playing the next season for a bigger piece of the pie. Think about how much money 15 million new fans spend in ballparks when they go, not to mention the new interest in second tier franchises (at that time) like Toronto and Philadelphia.

So, what happened? Many things, of course. But among the most prominent was this: In 1995, MLB attendance dropped like a stone – to over five million below the level of 1992 (to 50,010,016). And the following year, fewer that a half million more fans came to the ballparks.

This is not forgotten by all concerned now.

Attendance did not return to 70 million until 1998, and that was greatly fueled by the so-called Steriod Era. Attendance then exceeded 72 million every season from 2004 to ’17.

Neither MLB owners nor the MLBPA will let a 20-million ticket drop happen again. There’s no new Steroid Era solution, for one thing.

This MLB work stoppage will be relatively short-lived. Some of spring training will likely be missed. Twenty million fans’ cash, however, will not be brushed aside.

No, hold on, make that 25 million. Last season, MLB attendance was only 45 million and change.