Morgan Douglas – Sports Editor
I do not know anybody who enjoys a lockout.
Locked out of the car. Bad.
Locked out of the house. Worse.
Major League Baseball’s lockout. Disaster.
I for one would much rather be locked in.
As in, locked in for a new collective bargaining agreement in order for MLB to get the season going and future seasons.
As of this writing, it is the deadline day for the league and the players’ association to come to terms with an agreement before regular season games start having to be canceled.
I have seen this coming for a while and my fears have been realized. This lockout could last a while.
When the pandemic forced MLB to shorten the 2020 regular season to 60 games, while still being able to get in a full slate of post-season games and crown a World Series champion, it set a precedent for something similar to be done down the line.
In 2020, the league was still able to get to the real money, the post-season.
I am not involved in these labor negotiations, nor would I want to be, but even I can see the fact that there is no real urgency to get this deal done by the Feb. 28 deadline, knowing full well both sides can prolong this throughout the spring and even into the summer, while still getting to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
In the meantime, I’ll have to scavenge for other nightly entertainment until my baseball returns to me.
Perhaps I’ll try a TV show for a change of pace, but where to start? Ozark, Succession, Euphoria, all these are as foreign to me as CBA labor negotiations are to the average sports fan, but it matters not.
I still have the NBA, which will only improve as we progress toward the playoffs, but my thoughts will still be of the ballpark. Envisioning the crowd doing the wave, hearing “Sweet Caroline” sung at Fenway Park and the roll call at Yankee Stadium, oh how I miss it already.
Hurry back soon baseball. I need my 7:05 p.m. appointment viewing back soon before I do something drastic during that time, like study. One shudders at the thought.
Besides, we still have some free agent dominos yet to fall. Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa, Clayton Kershaw, Freddie Freeman, I could go on. These guys are going to make major impacts wherever they sign. Wherever it is, I just hope it’s soon, because it will mean the return of baseball.
