Alan Greenwood

Using ultra-sensitive mind-reading devices, we bring you this exclusive report on the negotiations between Major League Baseball owners and players that will decide if there will be any games in 2020.

Owners: “Am not!”

Players: “Are so!”

Owners: Am not!”

Players: “Are so.”

Owners: “Nyah, nyah, nyah!”

Players: “Nyah, nyah, nyah!”

This is the essence of a war that has a very real chance of burying baseball. With a bit of luck, the war might only inflict a serious, but not fatal wound.

At the very least, it ensures that anyone who is not a hardcore hardball fan will ignore the game until something very dramatic rekindles their mild interest.

If MLB had to juice the baseballs to create the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run duel, this time they may need to eliminate all doubt and stamp Super Balls with simulated stitches.

Thank commissioner Rob Manfred for supplying the paint to create this bleak picture. It seems like just days ago – because it was – that Manfred boldly declared that he was 100 percent certain that there would be MLB games this year.

After the players rejected the owners’ latest offer, Manfred did a backflip that would quicken the pulse of a world-class gymnast.

“I’m not confident. I think there’s real risk; and as long as there’s no dialogue, that real risk is gonna continue,” Manfred said Monday.

The dialogue ceased when the players learned that MLB renewed its deal with Turner Sports for rights fees that will drop $1 billion into its collective piggy bank.

That blows open a fairly large cavity in the owners’ lament that the baseball industry, according to St. Louis Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt, “isn’t very profitable, to be quite honest.”

Oh lord, could you possibly save these fools from themselves?

Poor-mouthing has long been the owners’ plaintive cry with each lurch toward a collective bargaining agreement. Apparently they don’t realize that fans stopped taking that as gospel at least two negotiations ago.

If there is a big-league player who buys that, let him step forward and be heard (at least until Tony Clark stuffs a sock in his mouth).

None of the above is meant to let the Players Association off the hook. They, too, are quite adamant about keeping those mega-paydays coming. The players are as out of touch with public sentiment as the owners, and are even more belligerent in their ignorance.

When the MLBPA tells Manfred to set a schedule and their members will all report for duty, their underlying message is simple: “We’ll come back, but when we resume negotiating next year you better be ready for a rumble the likes of which you have never seen.”

The default position for many fans is that the players are greedy so-and-sos and should just shut up and play. There is truth in that statement, but it is far too lenient in its demands from the owners.

There has not been a single recorded incident in which a player walked into an owner’s office, plopped a trunk on his desk, produced a gun and snarled, “Fill it up with hundred-dollar bills, Mr. Owner.” The owners were anything but innocent bystanders as salaries, and ticket prices, began orbiting Mars.

Baseball’s wobbly path to this cliff has included arrogance and greed from both sides of the divide.

The owners and the players are equally culpable in bringing baseball to this point.

It is sad to say, but both sides may not realize what they have until it is gone.

Contact Alan Greenwood at 59401248 or agreenwood@nashuatelegraph.com.

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