A right on review  ,,,, 

It would be alot better if Manfred and owners loved the sport as much as the ( loyal fans ) did ,,, I'll take it another step though  , it also seems like the players don't love what they do and I guess that is business now adays  ....

Fire Manfred and hire Ken Rosenthal who is enthusiastic and knowledgeable of the game .

I feel exactly the same way, but I have more anger than apathy. We've suffered through COVID, unrest, economic upheaval and now we're watching a Russian autocrat spark war in Europe. Baseball offers hope, comfort and healing in hard times. It pulls us together outside in the most beautiful months in North America. The owners seem to have absolutely no interest in the legacy, history or the soul of the sport.

And they already won. They are life's winners. They would remain billionaires even if the MLBPA had doubled their meager requests. They could have handled this with some decency. They could have started negotiating in earnest from day one. They could have opened their books and made a case about their fiscal concerns for the game. They could have worked with the players to make necessary changes to this great game to make it more competitive and more steady for the next ten years.

That's what stewards of a national institution would do. Instead, they proved themselves to be petty vandals. Manfred's callous press-conference laughter says it all: the players, the fans, the sport doesn't mean a thing to any of them. It's a joke to them ... and the joke's on us.

I'll always love the Twins, but I have no love for what MLB has become. Yuck. I'd rather see a new league rise up with these players than to see the owners get what they want from their idiotic lockout.

The jokes been on us since Manfreds letter to the fans back in December  , maybe really since Manfred has been in office ....

I haven't been a fan of his at all , i knew his labor lawyer status would be a downfall to baseball ....

attendance is down across the leagues and have been decreasing for a number of years before covid 2020 ,,, the real loyal fans are leaving , owners have no real concept on how attract newer younger fans to the game ,, seems like their attitude is if it isn't broke don't fix it ,   well they better get their act together cause it's busted ,, ( I go to the games and I see the younger adults as partiers  and not paying attention to the product on the field ) ( they are the last to give a hurrah ) ...

I look at what they are bickering about and can't believe it from both sides ..

This is a game both owners and players should love if they are devoted to the fans and not the money .....

Both sides have positives and both sides have negatives , plain and simple , figure it out and play ball .. parity and players non eligible for arbitration is necessary  

if for example I was in the players corners , I would stop the league from implementing  new rules to the game that are supposed to shorten game times ,,,  It's not happening in my eyes , play ball with analytics  , cyber metrics  but keep the strategy in place for the games to be exciting  ,,, 

Some new rules maybe necessary  in today's game but making a relief pitcher pitch to minimum 3 batters sucks , almost lost the game for Atlanta in world series against dodgers  , strategy is almost non existence...

I know some of this sounds like a double standard  but I'd I was a played I'd fight  for the game I love not just the money  , 

If I was an owner I would fight for parity  , the cbt is to high as it is for team parity and the players want it higher for the minority of teams that can afford it to pay them more free agent dollars per year .

I took to long for lunch today 

I agree w/ the OP on who the villain is, but the author’s relative youth skews his perspective a bit.

There has been unprecedented stability and peace between the League and the PA over the last 25 years. Since the PA’s inception until 1994/95 there was a work stoppage every 3-4 years.

NHL, NBA and NFL have all had work stoppages since the last MLB stoppage. A work stoppage was an eventuality.

So no, MLB fan engagement is not as low as it’s ever been. Not by a long shot. If there are games played with PA players in ‘22 it won’t sink lower than ‘95. I doubt the players have the fortitude to forfeit the season to sink it lower than ‘94/95. The owners do have the fortitude and Manfred hates baseball, so they’ll scrub the season to get their way.

First, both sides are to blame, as both did not reach an agreement.  The players could have chose the owners offer, and the owners could have chose the players offer, but neither did.  To say it is all the owners fault, in my mind, is just not accurate.  

I will agree the owners are not opening their books to prove what they actually make.  That is a huge issue.  Do not claim you barely make money, but refuse to actually prove it.  That being said, the owners should not be expected to lose money owning a team, just because they could afford to.  

Fans need to remember that there are 30 teams and they have different interest too.  Even the players have different interests. There are large market owners, that would love to not have the luxary tax or have it higher like the players want.  However, there are small market owners that despite winning with little payroll still never get many fans in seats.  Then there are the teams in the middle.  Each has what they would like to see.  

Personally, I would like to see as much parity in the sport as you can get, and I would love to see top players staying with their teams, no matter where they come from.  I hated the early 2000's where most of the top guys went to either Yankees or Red Sox, with a few going to other teams.  Now, I cannot see the owners books, but I believe that some of the smaller market teams cannot sign some of the free agents and be a profitable business, without getting revenue sharing.  I could be wrong, and most likely they could spend more. 

The players are claiming they only care about making the game more competitive, but their proposals, outside of a draft lottery, which in baseball is a really who cares because rarely does the number 1 pick end up being the best player in the draft anyways, just does not make sense for competitive balance. 

The players want to raise the tax level and lower the penalty for breaking it.  Well, very few teams any given year are within 20 mil of the number, meaning it is not what is stopping a team from signing some, but other factors.  What those factors are, I cannot say.  Lifting the tax number and lowering the penalty will just put the top few market teams back into looking to sign each top star and being able to outbid the lower tier teams. 

The players are concerned about service time manipulation, which they should be, but decreasing years to FA, combined with higher tax line, will just make teams hold guys in minors even longer.  Teams tank or not be competitive for a couple of reasons.  One, they lack the current talent in their system to compete against other teams, so they keep their top prospects down to have longer team control when they do have enough talent to compete, and they do not want to waste money and years of service on losing seasons.  Two, more revenue sharing, international signing money, and more draft picks, getting the comp balance picks that they can use or trade.  

Both sides are to blame for this, I would argue the owners more so, and I do not blame the players for their stance.  That being said, the players could accept what is offered, not saying they should.  Regardless of how this shakes out, I just hope it does not go back to the top market teams signing every major FA again, with a splash here or there from other teams.  What the players should really demand is not that the tax line goes up, but that the revenue sharing from it, has to be spent on players.  Meaning every dollar that goes to other teams from revenue sharing must go to signing players.  

Not sure owners would go for it, but it gets you closer to what players want, better contracts across the board, not just bigger for the top few.  It would help keep teams more competitive.  

I will never lose my enthusiasm for the game - but I have lost my enthusiasm for the structure and leaders who are supposed to preserve the game.  Manfred is not the leader that is needed, but I do not know who is the right person to lead the players either.  I know there are owners, commissioner and staff, team front offices, coaches, players and prospects and agents.  Who has the real power, ultimately the owners, but in many ways the fans and the audiences on TV and radio.  We have no voice at the table, no one representing us.  

Look at 1995 - a shortened season with 144 games.  And it was the first season with extra - Division Series - post season games!!!  Their best asset was the Cal Ripken streak.  Baseball always needs something that a player does to get fan interest which was low until Sosa - McGwire put Baseball interest back beyond the pre-strike levels. "1993 attendance for Major League Baseball was 70,257,938 (Grabiner 1998). In 1995, the year aRer the strike, attendance dropped to 50,464,275 (Grabiner 1998)" 

I am reading a graduate research paper which includes this very interesting paragraph - "Some comments people had, were very interesting. One person who has been following baseball for fifty years and answered that another strike would lead him to stop spending completely commented that they should "dissolve the leagues and start over." Another comments "F'rior to the strikes of the past few years I used to go to a lot more games ... I have lost my enthusiasm for MLB, I now follow college and minor league baseball." A comment that I could relate to read "I was disappointed with the greed of the players during the strike. It is unfortunate that our society has come to this point.. ." A survey that 1 found very interesting came from a person who goes to 3-6 games a year. This persons answers indicated that the 1994 Major League Baseball Strike had no effect on their spending. This person did however say that another strike would lead them to stop spending on the sport completely."

Another part of his conclusions (please read the whole report): "Not one person answered that the strike increased their loyalty to the game. This shows that the consumers do not find anything positive about the strike. It also shows that Major League Baseball should expect absolutely no positive outcomes from a strike concerning their customers. Only negative actions should be expected from consumers."

2 hours ago, Trov said:

First, both sides are to blame, as both did not reach an agreement.  The players could have chose the owners offer, and the owners could have chose the players offer, but neither did.  To say it is all the owners fault, in my mind, is just not accurate.  

Imagine two people (X and Y) agree to sit at a table. Person X tells Person Y that when Y sits at the table, X is going to beat him over the head. Person Y understandably doesn't like this idea, and they fail to reach an agreement to sit down together. That doesn't mean "both sides are to blame." It's the quality of the interaction and the details of the offers that matter more than the fact that an agreement wasn't reached, isn't it?

The players have been locked out by the owners, and yet the owners wouldn't negotiate in the months before the lockout or the weeks after the lockout. The players financials are transparent: we know exactly what they earn from the sport and why. The owners financials are never shared unless required by law (in the case of GA). The players have repeatedly adjusted their offers in meaningful ways on multiple issues to find common ground. The owners didn't. There just is no reason that I can see to "both sides" this one.

Do I always agree with the players, or the MLBPA? Nope. But in this particular case, this mess is the clear responsibility of the owners. They think they can break the union. I hope they're dead wrong.

Maybe my memory is wrong, but Ueberoth was ML commissioner for a few great years who brought cache that the owners couldn't deny.  And MLB was fine and grew.. Bud Selig wasn't exactly a good commissioner at all! And he will forever have a stain on him for is role. But he will be remembered for labor peace at least. Being a "former" owner he brought his own cache. 

Manfred is a bogus mouthpiece who has no love for the game and has no skin involved. He's happy to cash his checks until the owners decide, FINALLY, they are tired of the BS and want someone to lead MLB in to the future. No clue who that guy will be. Sure hope owners will figure it out soon.

So why be romantic about baseball? Because it endures. Despite college football and the NFL and the NBA growth, and this CBA BS, baseball endures 

College BB and milb endures. MLB endures because we love the game. It endures because my father taught me the game over transistor radios and4car radios to know and love the game.

And so yes, despite the BS that is occurring now, I LOVE BB and am just waiting for great days and great moments to come.