It has been a day since Major League Baseball announced that the current lockout, which began on December 2, will (likely) lead to the cancellation of regular season games. For people who love the sport, this is a disheartening turn of events, confirming the deprival of cherished seasonal markers (Spring Training, Opening Day) and raising the almost unthinkable possibility of an entire season lost—as if a multiyear pandemic and war in Eastern Europe weren’t enough already. For casual sports fans, particularly those inclined to rant on social media, the lockout indicates the ongoing (and apparently irreversible) decline of baseball. As one Twitter boffin puts it, “Baseball is faceless slow sport that doesn't embrace change….Baseball powers have turn into the ‘Footloose’ elders who don't want bat flips, individual expression & are stuck w/fans that still get morning papers and listen to CDs.” As a baseball fan, I tend to fall into the former camp, though I try to remind myself that battles between owners and players are almost as old as the game itself. Indeed, I suspect that those who are most critical of baseball’s labor crisis are those who fail to grasp the game’s cultural and historical significance. For example, a common argument seems to be that baseball players should follow the lead of their peers in, say, the NFL and the NBA. According to this logic, these leagues are flourishing and baseball faltering; thus the onus is on baseball to adopt their model. But why are those sports flourishing? Doubtless one could cite various internal reasons—pace of play is often mentioned—but there are a host of external factors. Chief among these is the blatant corporatism of professional sports leagues, coupled with the relative lack of control that NFL and NBA players have over their respective games and careers. The NFL Players Association is widely known to be acquiescent, so much so that former quarterback Colin Kaepernick has likened NFL players to slaves. Meanwhile, the NBA’s embrace of commercial “branding” and global expansion has encouraged the league to turn a blind eye to atrocities in China. When NBA veteran Enes Kanter Freedom recently criticized the Chinese government for human rights abuses, he was promptly dismissed from the league. As the strongest professional players union, whose roots go back to the late nineteenth century,1 the MLBPA is trying to ensure that its players (both present and future) are not subject to the whims of corporate greed. Perhaps, then, the charge that baseball is an archaic relic of a bygone era hits the mark, albeit not in the way that the charge is intended. In refusing to kowtow to institutional profiteering, the MLBPA is taking a stand as American as baseball itself. That the current impasse is so faciley decried neglects this point and, in doing so, risks turning the naked corporatization of professional sports into a fait accompli.
Rather than a quote today, this scene from The Natural (1984) seems fitting:
In October 1885, New York Giants shortstop John Montgomery Ward established the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, the very first union of pro athletes.
I had to read this aloud to my spouse last night after Ash Wednesday services, who agrees heartily with you and is both really pained about the situation and supportive of the union.