Many baseball fans and pundits fear greed will damage or destroy the next Major League Baseball season.<\/p>\n
The \u201cArmageddon 2027\u201d scenario isn\u2019t far-fetched.<\/p>\n
Team owners will insist on a hard salary cap, it appears now, while the players will continue to insist against it.<\/p>\n
Playing hardball, owners will lock out the players when the collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1.<\/p>\n
From there, both sides will climb the escalation ladder, ultimately postponing games slated for 2027, then canceling them.<\/p>\n
It will fall on MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, 67, and union leader Bruce Meyer, 69, to explain the outcome to fans.<\/p>\n
Manfred worked on MLB\u2019s negotiating team in 1994, when a labor stalemate nixed Tony Gwynn\u2019s .400 pursuit and the World Series while also dooming the Montreal Expos.<\/p>\n
Would a similar outcome next summer lead Manfred to reprise former commissioner Bud Selig\u2019s comments three decades ago depicting the labor strife as tragic and terrible?<\/p>\n
Would Meyer choose to echo Donald Fehr, who blamed owners for provoking the work stoppage by insisting on implementing a salary cap?<\/p>\n
While the situation appears more fraught than at any other time in MLB since the horrors of August 1994, I don\u2019t expect a comparable outcome.<\/p>\n
I see Dodgers owner Mark Walter as a potential dealmaker who can appease his fellow owners while also commanding respect from the players.<\/p>\n
I put stock in Walter\u2019s ability to see the big picture, evidenced by his comments in March that acknowledged the Dodgers\u2019 massive TV deal confers massive advantages.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t win all the time,\u201d Walter told the Los Angeles Times\u2019 Bill Shaikin. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to have some parity.\u201d<\/p>\n
It could be wishful thinking on my part, but Walter seems agreeable to moving MLB\u2019s economic system toward one that improves the opportunities of teams in smaller media markets, such as Brewers, Reds, Pirates, Royals, Padres and Athletics.<\/p>\n
While I don\u2019t believe MLB can replicate the NFL\u2019s economic system in terms of equality of opportunity,\u00a0 it\u2019s encouraging that Dodgers ownership is willing to move in that direction. Among the small-market owners, the Brewers\u2019 Mark Attanasio draws widespread respect, making him a potential dealmaker.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another factor that\u2019s even more likely to bring about a new MLB labor pact that doesn\u2019t take a (big) bite out of the \u201927 season.<\/p>\n
A U.S. economy beset by numerous challenges could make it too unpalatable for MLB\u2019s wealthy actors to withhold regular-season games while so many fans suffer financially.<\/p>\n
If a majority of Americans continue to report inflation and affordability concerns, MLB power brokers stand to get clobbered in the court of public opinion by not reaching a timely agreement.<\/p>\n
Two out of three Americans feel deep anxiety about affording basic necessities,\u00a0per the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, while also viewing inflation as a \u201cvery big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
In similar numbers, reports data journalist Elliott Morris, Americans describe the cost of living for an average family in their local area as \u201cnot very affordable\u201d or \u201cnot affordable at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
While U.S. investment giants such as Vanguard project resilient consumer spending and a stable labor market, they also forecast headwinds from sticky inflation and strained real income.<\/p>\n
So although economic forecasts can be as volatile as baseball game forecasts, the affordability crisis that a majority of Americans are experiencing today seems likely to persist beyond the expiration of MLB\u2019s current labor pact.<\/p>\n
A powerful dissenting voice about the economy comes from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who doesn\u2019t buy the polling results.<\/p>\n
Per the New York Times this week, Bessent downplayed the impact of inflation on lower-income Americans, declaring that the \u201cK-shaped\u201d economy \u2014 shorthand for the divergent fortunes of the rich and poor \u2014 is a thing of the past.<\/p>\n
In baseball, the K denotes a strikeout.<\/p>\n
Whether or not Bessent is correct in his analysis, which comes less than three months before the November elections, MLB leaders will want to keep an eye on how the majority of Americans are faring economically.<\/p>\n
MLB\u2019s billionaires and millionaires will both strike out in the court of public opinion\u00a0if they take for granted the millions of fans whose thin financial margins may be dwindling toward zero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many baseball fans and pundits fear greed will damage or destroy the next Major League Baseball season. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-434187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}