The main parking lot at the Los Angeles Angels’ spring training site in Tempe, Arizona, remains closed during the Major League Baseball lockout. Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
Have you been keeping a close eye on the negotiations between Major League Baseball and its Players’ Association?
No? You’re not alone. There seems to be a collective shrug from most of the country. Sure, people with a deep connection to the game – those paid to work in and around the industry and the sport’s most diehard fans – have been doomscrolling Twitter for the past week trying to see what was happening in the labor negotiations. But most of the country has had its attention elsewhere.
It’s hard to get fired up about a professional sport’s work stoppage when that same timeline is filled with updates of a war waging in Europe. It’s hard to feel anything other than disgust when owners and players can’t agree on how to split up the proceeds of a $10 billion industry.
It was a completely different story in 1994, the last time Major League Baseball shut down over a labor dispute. That work stoppage came midseason, with the last games of the year being played Aug. 11. Baseball was still the national pastime, and the idea that the game was going to stop was unfathomable.
The players’ strike was headline news in newspapers across the country. The sport’s pause was covered breathlessly by ESPN and every local TV station across the country.
It had been a glorious baseball season until things shut down. There was a revitalization of baseball in Montreal thanks to the Expos and Pedro Martinez. The Cleveland Indians were playing in their sparkling new home, and sellout crowds at Jacobs Field were delighted by a team featuring the likes of Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome. Kenny Rogers threw a perfect game for Texas.
Then it all went dark. The game shut down, the sides didn’t speak for weeks, and the nation was beside itself. Sports fans couldn’t imagine a world without baseball.
It’s a different world now. We live in a football-crazed country where the fall sport is a year-round obsession. The top stories on ESPN’s website were about the NFL, NBA and March Madness. Coverage of the lockout was listed seventh on the website’s list of “top headlines.”
This is definitely not a baseball-crazed world. The sport’s fan demographic is aging, the game’s beauty has been stifled by analytics and the length of most games stretches far beyond the attention span of a fan base that has more entertainment options than ever before.
Still, the game has the potential to be more exciting than ever. Some of the greatest athletes in the history of the sport have burst onto the scene. We’re seeing a bumper crop of young stars flourish. The 2021 Red Sox, with raucous crowds delighted by an unexpected October run, reminded us that a night at the ballpark can be exactly the time of communal celebration we’ve been missing over the last two years.
The 1994 strike lasted through the winter, canceling the ’94 World Series and delaying the start of the ’95 season. It inflicted serious damage to the sport. Montreal, which began that season talking about building a new ballpark, soon lost the Expos. All teams lost fans when the games finally resumed. It took the home run chase of 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa captivated the country, to bring people back to the ballpark.
McGwire and Sosa are not walking through the door to save the game this time. The league will face numerous challenges even after a labor agreement is reached. Losing the offseason, a time when baseball’s fans talk about trades and signings and their team’s hopes for the coming year, only set the sport back more.
Those of us involved in the game were keeping a close eye on developments in Jupiter, Florida, on Monday as the two sides met on the day owners set as a deadline to get a full season done.
The problem is, most fans were not keeping an eye on those developments. And those wandering eyes might not be turning back to the sport. After all, this is 2022. Not 1994.
Tom Caron is a studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN. His column runs on Tuesdays in the Portland Press Herald.
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