Dear MLB and owners: Regarding the lockout, it’s Hammer Time right now
As the clock to save a 162-game Major League Baseball season reaches the 11th hour, the message to the MLB owners is clear: it’s time to get a deal done.
One of the few good things that this MLB lockout has done for me is that it has forced me to find different ways to spend my time. Instead of trying to find the trail of where someone like Carlos Correa could sign, the lockout has rather put a hold on all that right now that the only thing that I could honestly do is wait. Board games and watching movies are always a good idea to pass, but trying to find a different sport to watch was always a good idea.
I tried watching different sports from soccer, the amazing NFL postseason, hockey. Hell, I even got into NASCAR. But there was one from sport that intrigued me the most during this lockout: Formula 1 racing.
I was enamored at the story and history of the sport and after catching up watch the Netflix documentary of it to catch me up on the last three seasons. I really enjoy the sport. So much that I’ve bought too many Formula 1 polos for my count.
While teaching myself to understand how the world of Formula 1 racing works, one of the ways that I used to teach myself was watching old race and qualifying highlights from watching James Hunt finishing in third to win the 1976 World Drivers Championship by a single point at the 2016 Japanese Grand Prix to watching the rather controversial finish of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
While watching one of the races, I could hear one phrase that was repeated frequently as I watched other racing highlights: “It’s Hammer Time.” The phrase is prominently used by Mercedes, one of it not, the best teams in Formula 1 racing at the moment. Think of the late 1940s-early 1960s New York Yankees or Alabama in college football. That’s what Mercedes is in Formula 1 currently.
Mercedes uses the “Hammer Time” phrase constantly for one of their racers, Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time Formula 1 world champion and arguably one of the greatest athletes in the world ever. Hammer Time is simple message with a simple meaning: You have to give everything all you got right now.
That where things stand in labor negotiations between the MLBPA and the owners and that is where things need to go for if there’s any chance to save the sport and MLB: It’s Hammer Time right now. It’s time to get a deal done.
No more refusing to budge on the competitive balance tax.
No more trying to get rid of minor league baseball jobs from players who are not even getting paid minimum wages.
No more refusing to budge on your so called “non-negotiable items.”
No more trying to wait until the self-imposed deadline to get a deal done when you could’ve just gotten done in December instead of waiting for over weeks on end.
The legacies of not just Rob Manfred, but all 30 owners from Stu Sternberg to Hal Steinbrenner and the future of Major League Baseball is at stake right now.
Don’t tell me the league is fine. Financially yes, only the NFL was making more money than you before the pandemic . But let’s also be honest: the games are getting longer, the age of the fan base is getting older, World Series viewerships are falling off a cliff, and you’re seeing more people shift to the NBA and NFL while seeing other sports like European soccer leagues, the Premier League, and Formula 1 racing, who just had its best viewership in the U.S. ever, and its U.S.-based race in Austin sold out within minutes of tickets being released that a second U.S.-based race in Miami is happening in May 2022 and a potential third one in Las Vegas is 2023 in on the horizon.
Its time to get a deal done MLB. If MLB does not get a deal done, do you know who the fans are going to blame first? It’s definitely not going to be the fact that Max Scherzer is driving a Porsche to negotiations. No, it’s going to be on Manfred and every single owners from the rather cheap ones of Stu Sternberg and Larry Dolan to the rather more richer and powerful ones like Hal Steinbrenner, Jerry Reinsdorf, and Bill Dewitt.
This lockout needs to end as soon as possible. The sooner we can finally gets the words, “We have a deal,” the better. Believe me, no one wants to see the same, “There is no deal, there was never going to be one” meme on every MLB national baseball writer’s twitter accounts.
It’s time to give the players and the fans what they wanted from the beginning: a reasonable and fair deal for everyone. Instead of trying to anger the players even more than ever, it’s time to get a deal done.
Next. Niko Goodrum is an unlikely poster child of the MLB lockout. dark
MLB and the owners: Get a deal in place before the clock strikes midnight. It’s Hammer Time.