Grim news from the Ongoing Drivel Slog between MLB owners and players:
Nothing is happening, neither side is budging, and the Feb. 16 opening of baseball camps - a traditional sign that winter is done with us - looks shakier than ever.
Damn them... They blew it up... Damn them all to hell...
So... help me, folks. How should we deal with this slow-motion avalanche of greed, hubris and stupidity?
Today, I was going to write how the Yankees are so bereft and adrift that they may need to trade Gleyber Torres - the only guy other teams will take - but... why bother? Why give these assholes free ether? They're using Feb. 16 as a cudgel. We shouldn't get in their way.
In a time of great impending cultural turmoil, we are watching baseball shoot itself - not in the foot, but in the head.
Frankly, it's stunning how the powers who run the game - I mostly refer to the owners, but the union is not guiltless - have let this dispute linger so far. For years now, the sport has faced a troubling impasse, but the reactions of both sides were to draw lines in the sand and wait for the apocalypse - the end of the labor agreement. Well, it's almost here. Will anybody step up to the plate?
Baseball is surviving via its popularity within a rapidly graying demographic, while it simultaneously prices itself out of future generations.
I have three kids, all grown up. None gives a shit about baseball. They saw the greed, the tedium, the tiredness - and it lost them long ago. I don't blame them. They're better off not caring.
The Yankees are now the Mets, and vice-versa. Thomas Boswell once wrote "Why Time Begins on Opening Day." Well, opening day is in trouble, folks, and if the 2022 season gets delayed - well - it will be time for baseball's fanbase to do the right thing... to stay home.
MLB better not have thrown out those cardboard fan cutouts from 2020. And it might need to resurrect those sound tracks of cheering crowds.
They have two weeks to settle this. That's enough time, unless they're too stupid to know better. If so, damn them all to hell.