MLB lockout hits silly phase: Spring Training doesn’t loom

All right, then. The current MLB lockout has now reached its silly phase. In the general absence of actual baseball news, on February 9, NBC Sports Philly ran a piece on one of Bryce Harper’s Instagram posts. The reigning NL MVP is apparently itching to get to Spring Training.

If there is any person who wants to start the formal 2022 MLB season, it is surely Bryce Harper. It is also just as surely the eight other players currently under contracts worth in excess of $300 million. This would be a simple business matter. A contract is no good, however, if you are locked out because you belong to a union.

What’s a $300 million man to do when there’s an MLB lockout?

Silly and amusing, right? The trail to this MLB lockout began, necessarily and properly, with the rise of the Major League Players Association, and the MLBPA ultimately led to $300 million contracts.

For a few. And likely not on schedule now since the players and owners still have to hash out how to divide up all the money that rolls into MLB teams in wheelbarrows.

What’s a great player to do? Take pictures of your stuff for Florida, apparently, while you mull over the notion that maybe if you didn’t have that contact, and some of your teammates made more…. Well, whatever.

Apparently, Harper decided it was high time to arrange some traveling clothes for a social media post labeled “THAT TIME OF YEAR!”

Easily identifiable are a small Phillies bag with the logo no longer officially favored by the team, and in or near a larger bag, a pair of jeans, a belt, a knit cap labeled “LIONS NOT SHEEP,” and several pairs of what appear to be boat shoes.

This was a very benign post compared to some that MLB players and fans have delivered to the internet to criticize the owners and baseball’s commissioner. Some of these posts have been restrained, like the curiously punctuated item from Max Scherzer (“We don’t need mediation because what we are offering to MLB is fair for both sides:”). Some from fans have been clever (“This MLB lockout is longer than a damn CVS receipt”), and some from both players and fans have been not quite suitable for young readers’ eyes.

According to the New York Daily News, the commissioner was scheduled to address the media February 10 and was expected to announce the obvious, that Spring Training would be delayed. This means that Opening Day is now threatened.

This was termed “the biggest blow yet of the MLB lockout.” (Well, it’s surely the biggest blow to the hopes of borderline players.)

I wonder what Bryce Harper’s next packing-for-Florida picture will include? Maybe some of the noses cut off owners’ and players’ heads to spite their faces.