Hello Baseball Fans,
Everyone here at the VFTD hopes you’re having a happy and merry holiday season and that you can ring in the new year with hope and a fresh outlook to the future! AND, if we are all so fortunate enough, there will soon be reason to be hopeful about the 2022 MLB season (fingers crossed). We are at the beginning of a lockout since the team owners and the union of MLB Players’ Association (MLBPA) were not able (and less than half-heartedly even attempted) to reach an agreement before December 2nd on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). In all, Major League Baseball has had nine labor disputes that resulted in the infamous and dreaded work stoppages. Here is the list of each year that they occurred and how many days they, in some cases, dragged on (NOTE, ‘Strike’ designates a player walk-out and ‘Lockout’ designates an owners’ shutdown. Essentially, it takes both sides to result in a ‘party’ in either case though):
1972 Strike: 13 days. 1973 Lockout: 18 days. 1976 Lockout: 17 days. 1980 Strike: 8 days. 1981 Strike: 20 days. 1985 Strike: 2 days. 1990 Lockout: 32 days. 1994-’95 Strike: 232 days. 2021 Lockout: Dec. 2nd to 12/31 (to date and counting).
That means that as of today, December 31st of 2021, is the three hundred seventy-first day, and counting, of no work as a result of the nine work stoppages in MLB history. Basically, that total is one full calendar year’s worth (including most of the extra ‘leap year’ days in that span) of work stoppage days in just a few months shy of the 50 years since the first stoppage in the CBA era. That is a whopping TWO percent of the time that they weren’t ‘able’ to be working! Sometimes it has meant lost games, delayed contracts, even the 1994 World Series was lost as likely the biggest travesty of all, at least from a strictly fan perspective (other economic factors such as local and stadium job losses would easily trump our disruption in entertainment). Imagine that in any other business?!
Please do not forget, this is BIG business after all. Prior to The Pandemic, this is a more than ten billion dollar annual industry. At this point, we have heard this big business mantra for many decades, regularly and often, related to decisions around player free agency updates and signings. And it is delivered to us from many angles from the players, general managers, director of operations, and of course the owners themselves. The game is like any other global brand. They want to grow the game to the younger generation. They want to keep expanding the brand as a result of its revenues. A lockout is several steps in the WRONG direction. We would think that such big business would focus early and often by learning to wage battle and lock-in in this regard well in advance of the obvious ensuing strike or lock-out!!
The owners and the union acknowledge that they are far apart. They have been for months and months. They know it will take a lot of negotiating talks and compromise to come to an agreement. Why the delay? Leverage can go both ways in that the players will not get paid and the owners will not have revenue at some point. So just cut out all of the ridiculousness and get to work on getting to work!! The work stoppage does not occur terribly often, but the narrative is repetitive so much so that it is preventative.
A couple of the many items at the ‘talks’ that currently are NOT taking place are free agency rules and funding of player bonuses and pensions. The owners say they are committed to getting things ironed out and we’re sure they do not want to lose any games in 2022 as the lost revenue from 2020 is still fresh in their minds. The level of commitment is questionable at best. The owners would be well served and so would the game due to the lack of getting any p.r. as the lockout heads into its second month by ENDING the lockout IMMEDIATELY!! If the strategy was a lockout would force the negotiations to begin, it clearly has not worked. It is time to move on from this phase. Ending the lockout well in advance of Spring Training would make the owners look as good as they possible could in the public eye and would speed up the process as a whole. The thought here is to start early, finish on time (for the real games). Otherwise, players can’t even meet with coaches, media have no one to interview, and baseball gets lost in the off-season shuffle!!
OK fans, we have kept things on the lighter side of details considering the grave subject nature of a labor stoppage. How the two sides reach an agreement is up to scores of people on both sides. Our advice and take here was how to get the operation under way. But we can not dry things out too much here (perhaps dry is next month for some, haha?!). We need some fun so we’re going to play off of the numbers as we typically do.
The first is 371 since today is the 371st day of all work stoppages combined as we mentioned above. For all-time Home Run Leaders, nobody has currently hit exactly 371 HRs. New York baseball icon Gil Hodges hit 370 though. And tied for 371st place for all-time HRs at 195 dingers are the familiar names of Jay Bell, Asdrubal Cabrera, Toby Harrah, Minnie Minoso, and Josh Willingham. Hall of Famers Gary Carter and Pie Traynor hit exactly 371 doubles (good for 250th place all-time) along with two-time Silver Slugger Daniel Murphy.
Nine is our second number since this is the 9th work stoppage. Neatly, Nine is the number of players on the field and the number of innings. Minnie Minoso wore number nine for sixteen of his seasons. Nine was also the number of Ted Williams for all of his 19 playing seasons, which is the most by a niner all-time. It was also the jersey of both Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller during their rookie seasons in 1936. Fellow HOFer and 3,000-hit club member Paul ‘Big Poison’ Waner also wore number 9 for one season, randomly in 1940, in his last of 15 seasons in Pittsburgh before moving on to the Dodgers and Yankees. Slugger extraordinaire Reggie Jackson wore nine for nine seasons starting in ’68 (eight in Oakland and one in Baltimore). And finally, nine is the number of World Series Championships won by each of the RedSox and Athletics organizations (3rd most).
Our last number is 2. One (and most) may think of Derek Jeter when thinking of number two. He wore 2 for 20 years, the most all-time. And one can only hope that the upcoming ‘Twenty-2 season will be a year that begins because both the league and the union displayed the same type of class in and out of the negotiating rooms that Jeter displayed on and off the field for his playing career and continues to do so as the Miami Marlins’ C.E.O. And the owners and union should remember that, more times than not, it takes two to turn two!! Get it done for ’22!
Here is to a Happy New Year Baseball Fans! Later.