{"id":802844,"date":"2026-07-15T05:11:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T05:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/802844\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T05:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T05:11:11","slug":"labour-dispute-shifts-to-background-as-product-shines-at-all-star-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/802844\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour dispute shifts to background as product shines at All-Star Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA \u2013 There is a dissonance around baseball right now that\u2019s difficult to reconcile. The product on the field is tremendous, elite talents in every market, freer than ever to flash personality as the game sheds a long-embedded hidebound culture. Case in point, American League starter Dylan Cease<\/a> and catcher Shea Langeliers wearing mics and talking through pitch calls during a shutout first at the 96th\u00a0All-Star Game on Tuesday. And business is good, with year-to-year attendance up and ratings strong, the MLB Draft on NBC and Home Run Derby on Netflix demonstrative of MLB\u2019s attempts to reach new audiences in a fragmented media world.<\/p>\n

These should be happy times and as the Midsummer Classic nodded to the 250th\u00a0anniversary of the Declaration of Independence\u2019s signing during the pre-game festivities, with the starting lineups autographing a mock parchment lineup on their way to the field, and a 4-0 American League win over the National League, they very much are.<\/p>\n

At the same time, they very much aren\u2019t with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire Dec. 1, the sides not even on the same spectrum they could be on opposite sides of and the threat of an extended labour disruption as real as it\u2019s been since the summer of 2002, when a late-season strike was averted just before the deadline.<\/p>\n

Early proposals featuring maximalist demands from each side are demonstrative of the divide and their fight for control of the narrative spilled into the all-star week festivities during the annual visits by commissioner Rob Manfred and players union head Bruce Meyer with members of the Baseball Writers\u2019 Association of America.<\/p>\n

Meyer accused the league, \u201cof working to convince fans, the consumers of their product \u2026 that they don’t have hope, or they shouldn’t have hope, or that the product that they’re paying to consume in record numbers is somehow broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s perverse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Manfred, speaking after Meyer, immediately took a dig at his counterpart, saying \u201cI have a brief 30-minute opening statement that I have prepared.\u201d The commissioner then continued to defend owners\u2019 pursuit of a salary cap as a necessary response to the competitive balance issues he said fans continually identify as a concern, according to their research.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur process of listening to fans is actually very sophisticated,\u201d said Manfred. \u201cWe use professional pollsters. We cut our demographics, big market, small market, by age, by avidity. We pay attention to all of those things. We also do focus groups to get a more granular feel for what people are saying and take the information as it comes. People feel a certain way on a certain topic, they’re concerned about a work stoppage, that’s something that we take into account thinking about what we’re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For that reason, the contours both sides are carving into their negotiating positions are just as important as the public\u2019s reaction to them, since owners and players are each aiming to use fan pressure against the other. The battle for hearts and minds will make this perhaps the most public and information-dense negotiation yet, with MLB\u2019s Level the Playing Field ad campaign the latest salvo.<\/p>\n

Expect the labour situation to regularly shift from background to foreground to background for the rest of the season, all while the product shines, the way it did before 43,916 at Citizens Bank Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The American League put up a three-spot in the first against Phillies ace Cristopher Sanchez on Cody Bellinger\u2019s two-run single and an RBI single from Yankees teammate Ben Rice, while Cease proceeded to strike out Kyle Schwarber on a slider, Juan Soto on a 98 m.p.h. fastball and, after a Freddie Freeman walk, CJ Abrams on a slider.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always want to strike guys out,\u201d said Cease. \u201cI really just wanted to throw strikes and not walk guys. Before the game, I was kind of pondering, do I start out with a changeup? I thought it’d be funny. But (Justin) Verlander talked me out of it so we started off with a heater and I’m glad we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cease is also glad he decided to get mic\u2019d up, feeling that an All-Star Game \u201c is always a good time for it,\u201d while providing himself a memento he could watch to remember the experience years down the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fear is you go out, you talk, you have fun and then you get whacked and it’s a little embarrassing,\u201d he added. \u201cI think it’s good for the game. Fans like to see it and to be honest, I had a really good time doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teammate Ernie Clement<\/a> had a good time making a couple strong defensive plays, the first frustrating fans by picking a Kyle Schwarber smash in the third, the other stealing a hit from Dodgers centre-fielder Andy Pages, who made the title-saving catch against him in the ninth inning of World Series Game 7.<\/p>\n

Clement\u2019s mind immediately went there and \u201cI was kind of pointing at him, just so he knows that I know that I kind of got him back,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I would have loved for it to be the other way around. \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s all love,\u201d he continued. \u201cI have a lot of admiration for the way he plays the game. Pages just seems like such a good dude and he made one of the best plays in post-season history, World Series history, given the circumstances. Just getting him back a little bit, it felt pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other highlights included a 433-foot homer by White Sox third baseman Miguel Vargas in the eighth, followed by a clean inning by Blue Jays closer Louis Varland, while Aroldis Chapman and Bryan Baker locked things down in the ninth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, memorable day all around, especially for the Blue Jays, who had John Schneider managing the AL side with his coaching and training staff, a reward for that trip to the World Series a year ago. Schneider and pitching coach Pete Walker could also breathe a sigh of relief, not having to stress over how to cover the nine innings.<\/p>\n

While Toronto\u2019s hopes for hosting the 2028 All-Star Game are being complicated by MLB\u2019s desire to participate in the L.A. Olympics, the 2027 contest is slated for Wrigley Field in Chicago. And despite a time of immense prosperity and opportunity in the game, the path from here to there is shaping up as an immensely bumpy one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2013 There is a dissonance around baseball right now that\u2019s difficult to reconcile. The product on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-802844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}