[ESPN] MLB suspends spring training, delays Opening Day at least two weeks

I mean I hear you and I don't disagree, but the same rhetoric was being bandied about in the mid-90s, and it was accurate then, too. For some reason, MLB has remained strong--even had a resurgence--since then. Those younger folks from then are the 40-and-50-year-olds who are talking about baseball today. MLB is not, and may never again be, "America's pastime". NFL and NBA are more exciting on TV and have better video games. So I don't see MLB getting past them again in my lifetime. But, like you said, it's not going away.

It seems that young adults, when they grow up, discover which sport is truly best.

 

If the Astros weren't supposed to be good this year I would just ask the players to take it or leave it. Owners would save a lot of money not having to pay them for a season if they didn't want to take a revenue share.

I have a feeling most players will take the money if it came down to it however. If some choose to sit out due to safety concerns they would get docked a years salary, and would receive an additional year added to when they'll become a free agent.

 

Not to derail this thread into something political, but that's just really an unknown. There probably will be, but who knows? That's why the WHO just said the other day that this might not ever go away, and we can't assume a vaccine will eradicate it.

Idk why this issue has become so partisan and why everyone feels they have a unique perspective on it. Nobody really knows how this ends (unless you happen to be a pandemic expert, otherwise please share more), and the only people I see making extremely strong self-assured claims are political 'pundits' that are literally experts in nothing.

 

Owners sometimes negotiate in bad faith... WOW, color us all shocked, poor millionaire baseball players!!!

Nobody feels bad for them. For players to assume people will is horribly, horribly tone-deaf. "This is too risky for $6-mill... but $9-mill, maybe," meanwhile you have millions of Americans having to face the same risk if not more to make $10/hour to support their families. STFU and keep it behind closed doors.

If the MLB can't figure this out over money and the NBA/NFL can... baseball will get crushed and deservedly so.

 

The mid 90's attendance slump was directly related to the strike and ensuing resentment. Before the strike attendance had been consistently trending upward for decades. They actually had more fans coming to games in 93/94 than they did last season.

Baseball attendance has been on a decline for a few years. Not a steep decline, but a decline and there's not a clear reason why.

 

MLB the show may be the best sports video game there is... on par with Madden.... and this includes people who don't even like baseball.

Baseball will always have a following. But its a regional sport... and it always has been. Most local fans care largely only about their local team, or maybe a key rival or two. Nobody from Houston is staying up late to watch a Padres-Rockies game simply because they love all things baseball... whereas if that was a Chargers-Broncos game, its going to be watched everywhere (because, gambling).

As long as the local team is having success, baseball will continue to have fans and draw well. All sports have seen viewership drop relative to their hey-days. The NBA was actually struggling big-time this year in ratings... and they're still faced with the problems of a largely meaningless regular season that features star players taking games off everyday. MLS never had a following. The NFL will remain king as long as pro football is allowed to be played without detrimental medical effects.

 

90's stadiums had universally more capacity, and featured very few luxury/big-ticket items such as club levels, suites, mini-season packages for premium seats, etc.

Problems could include the luxury focus as mentioned above, as most teams now have smaller newer intimate ballparks that make more money simply because of those options. There's been more competitive imbalance as well as of late... with some fan bases fully acknowledging the the team shouldn't even try and spend money, and everybody will agree to come back when the farm has been fully built and the big league team starts putting out a winning product.

Playoff games still seem to be drawing very well... which was at one point a problem in the 90's (mainly Houston and Atlanta).

 

Heard this mentioned on Barstool and actually thought it would be brilliant - how much of a PR master move would it be if the Astros band together as a team and say "We just want to play baseball. This has been an extremely tough time for Americans, and we understand how badly people are hurting and just want a distraction. As a result, we are offering to forego our salaries for the 2020 season if it will help make the season a reality," or something to that effect.

There is no way they actually would have to forego the money, and do they not just instantly 180 and become American heroes? Compare that to Trevor Bauer waxing his business acumen about how unfair it is he is being asked to take a little less while still making millions... after clowning the Astros all year for being super-villains. It would be amazing Really helps put things into perspective too - I'm sure already people are already starting to think 'it was probably a little silly of me to focus so much of my energy on being angry at baseball players for cheating' after everything that's happened.

 

The NBA and NFL already figured this out because they have salary caps... and the players already only get a fixed percentage of the total revenue.

Baseball owners are trying to suggest that model "just for this one year" and the players are rebelling because its basically another form of a cap.

I know people keep talking about the effects of the 94 strike as a reason why the players shouldn't stand their ground... but I believe its precisely WHY they're standing their ground. They didn't give in back then and agree to a cap, which largely would have seen the biggest of contracts go away (especially the pitching ones which are completely asinine on paper).

The players union doesn't think the 93 strike was bad for the game... the game rebounded, they kept contract values going up, team franchise values continued to go up, cities continued to bend over backwards to finance stadiums for rich owners, and fans filled those new stadiums.

 

Madden is terrible. The only reason it sells is because it's the only football game in town. I am very confident that if the NFL never signed an exclusivity agreement, that NFL 2K would be well ahead of Madden in both sales and quality. ESPN NFL 2K5 destroyed Madden 05 and still does so many things better than Madden 20. It's a shame.

 

Based on instant twitter reaction to anything Astros (including posts about old players who weren't even around in 2017)... they'll be accused of trying to save face and take advantage of the situation for PR purposes... that's how deep-rooted the media blitz has made most baseball fans feel towards them.

 

Well there's very little other baseball options now, other than the show, so hopefully they'll at least keep up their quality.

 

I think I'd agree in late March or early April... but at this point? When baseball happening is a legitimate question? I picture it like this: Jomboy/Astericks tour guy/everyone else who has turned hating the Astros into one of their defining personality traits pointing out the saving face angle, most reasonable people responding 'who cares about that anymore, at least these guys are trying to give us the sport back instead of squabbling over an extra million on top of millions.'

 

I think this situation is different though. People have been locked indoors with nothing going on for months, and nearly 40million have lost their jobs, with many more having their income cut much more drastically than baseball player millionaires. People are desperate for sports to come back. Baseball had already been dwindling in support from younger ages, who are much more liberal, then you add on a missed season over millionaires/billionaires squabbling while every other major league figured it out... I could be wrong, but I don't think I'm overestimating how horrible that would be for the brand of baseball long-term.

 

Don't forget those in our nation's capital and Maryland!

 

Wow, i never realized you were a jerk

I used the car (actually truck) reference to say that even on a 5 figure salary, you can have a great life, which I do. How on earth that is representing what is wrong with the world is beyond me

You have no idea if there will be a true vaccine or not. There will likely be a form of one, but most likely it will be more like the flu vaccine which is normally in the 40% effective range. I hope i'm wrong on this, but history tells me that will be the case

As for me buying the "fake news" narrative, nice try jackass but I actually think both sides of the political spectrum are wrong. Neither truly care about us. Probably 95% of our nation either loves Trump or hates him, and neither side can see that they are both wrong. Quit putting me on either side of that argument guy, cause i'm not in it. capiche

And lastly, you call me dangerous and wrong and say you should stop reading my post....there is a pretty simple way to have the system ignore all of my posts so you don't have to read them, you should use it, jerk

 

Yea I fully agree with this. Baseball better figure this out. As i've said before, if they don't play because they can't get enough testing, or just don't think it is safe, the general public and more importantly (for MLB) baseball fans in general will not hold that against them. If they don't play because they can't agree on the money, they will take a public relations hit that they will suffer from for many years. I know baseball has overcome it before, and some said they wouldn't. But two main things are at play here. One, they really only came back last time when they allowed steroids to bring huge HR totals. But the bigger issue is the world we live in today with social media is totally different from the world in the 90's. Everything, and I mean everything is thrown out into the public's face now. Just like what started this debate, if Snell made those same comments in the mid 90's, many of us would hear about it over the next couple of days on sportscenter or something like that. Today it's immediate, and it brings on debates all over the nation. Totally different world

 

I don't totally disagree with this...but social media has changed things quite a bit. I remember high school kids in the 90's talking about baseball some, football was the main sport they talked about, but you would get some MLB conversation among them. Now for 95% of them it's totally non existent.

Baseball players don't do nearly the job connecting with today's youth through social media that NBA guys do.

 

I think there should be an option for the players on this. Let's say a guy with health conditions doesn't want to play this year, or any of them for that matter. They obviously won't get paid. But they should have the option of taking the year of service time and moving on from this years contract, or pushing the contract back a year. The obvious problem here is let's say you have a 30 million dollar contract and since we are only having half a season you would only actually get 15 million this year. The option of pushing that back a year would sound pretty good as you would then potentially get that contract paid in full next year. Something along those lines should be worked out though. According to a report that came out today (mlbtraderumors) there are players who have not gone public but are not likely to play this year regardless of finances

 

And just as big of a problem is even many of the pandemic experts and scientists have chosen a political side. Some of them can be trusted and some of them will say what they are supposed to. Personally, I don't trust either side anymore. And the whole thing sucks, everything just has to be political to so many people. I post things about the pandemic and someone automatically knows what side of the political spectrum i'm on (which was false by the way)...it's almost impossible to have legitimate debates anymore