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What the heck happened?

It seemed like we were on the verge of a deal between Major League Baseball and the players union on a new collective bargaining agreement and then the clock struck 5 p.m. ET Tuesday. That’s when the carriage turned into a pumpkin, the horses became mice, the footmen became lizards and all their clothes turned into overalls as the players rejected the league’s final offer, prompting MLB to cancel Opening Day.

Oh, and regular-season games – the first two series of the 2022 season – disappeared off the schedule, marking the first time in 27 years that games will be cancelled due to a labour dispute.

Contract negotiations are fluid. They have a pace and energy that is palpable. You can feel when you are closing in on a deal. Most negotiators will say don’t leave without closing the deal when that momentum gets rolling. 

Unfortunately, the negotiations between the MLB Players Association and team owners couldn’t be brought to a conclusion in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The two sides went back to their hotel rooms for a few hours of sleep, but before they would meet again, the negotiating teams reached out to their constituents to provide them with an update. Commissioner Rob Manfred and his team called owners, while the MLBPA scheduled calls with players and agents.

The owners’ team of negotiators arrived at the facility in Jupiter, Fla., Tuesday morning believing they were going to get a deal done. But they quickly felt a change in energy and got the sense something had shifted on the union side. There were reports that some players and agents didn’t like a few of the items that the union caved on during negotiations. 

Remember, the players are coming into the negotiations with a chip on their shoulder because they have lost ground in the past two collective bargaining agreements. Their competitive nature is showing. They want a “win” this time around and there are a lot of opinions on how to get it. Sometimes too many voices can complicate the negotiations, and with that progress and momentum can stall. 

The owners tried to regenerate momentum on Tuesday afternoon, but the players were stuck in neutral. They stayed put and didn’t budge, prompting one last-ditch effort by the owners’ negotiating team to strike a deal.

They tried and failed. The players unanimously rejected the offer. And the “disastrous outcome” the commissioner hoped to avoid became a reality. 

The negotiators for the owners and players worked hard but could not find common ground to reach a deal. So, the lockout continues, creeping up on 100 days. Manfred said he had to postpone the first two series of the season, acknowledging that there isn’t time to get a deal done and adequately prepare the players to play. If a deal can’t get done in short order, more games will be cancelled.

Both negotiating teams are flying back to New York and will regroup and try to figure out what is next. They could possibly meet as early as Thursday. The parties need to get back to the table, to salvage as much of the season as possible. The ball is in the union’s court, as the owners have proposed the last offers in every area of the CBA. 

Time is a motivator in negotiations. We saw how the two parties reacted when the clock was running out and the risk of losing games became real. The players and owners took their negotiations into extra innings on Monday into Tuesday, up to and through the midnight deadline. They were hoping for a win but, in the end, they struck out.   

Hopefully, the noise of angry fans and judgmental media will be loud enough to wake the two sides up. A labour war between millionaire players and billionaire owners is offensive to fans when inflation is rising, gas prices are skyrocketing and there is war in Ukraine. 

There are good people on both sides of this negotiation, but the perception is that they are tone-deaf to what is going on in the world. Perceptions sometimes become reality, even when it may not be accurate. This is not lost on anyone, and hopefully it will be the driving force to get something done. 

If the parties can’t get a deal done in the next several days, the noise may die down, as people get distracted by something else. But the next driving force to create a sense of urgency will be pain. The pain of the loss of income or revenues will start to sink in on both sides. Losses heaped upon losses from the shortened 2020 season, which was cut to 60 games from 162 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The pain will be greater for the millionaires than the billionaires, obviously. The union has a war chest to keep players afloat during work stoppages, but for many it won’t match their contractual income. Generally, ballplayers live to the level of their income and if that dries up in a substantial way the pain will be impactful and possibly motivational. 

Remember, every game has the same dollar value to the players. They get paid the same amount for a game they play in April as they do in September. But games in April are less valuable to the owners. Other than Opening Day, attendance numbers are lower in April because of weather conditions and schools being in session. As the weather warms, attendance numbers grow and so does revenue. The losses suffered by the players will hurt more than the losses incurred by the clubs for the first month of the season. 

My hope is that the biggest motivating factor for the two sides is that neither of them want to relive the damage done to the game when the players went on strike in August of 1994, resulting in the loss of the playoffs that year and part of the 1995 season as well. They need to understand that making a deal may be better than winning the deal. At some point winning could come at a cost greater than the benefits of the victory. 

The fans are angry, and they should be. It is actually a good thing that the fans are mad. The danger comes if they become apathetic and disinterested. A fan booing is just waiting to cheer. A fan that is quiet may be lost forever.