The lockout is over! Opening day set for April 7th!
Baseball is back!
Major league baseball has been saved from itself. After 99 days in a tedious, often contentious shutdown as the owners and players negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement, a deal between the two sides has been reached. The lockout is over. Baseball is back! Thank fuck!
So let’s talk about it!
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As I sit here and write this I find that there isn’t a whole lot yet I want to say about the end of MLB’s 99-day lockout except to express incredible joy that there will actually be a baseball season this year. It may be a sport run by greedy owners that see it as nothing more than a system for wealth extraction, but we’re getting a full season of it! And more importantly, at least for the Blue Jays and their fans in particular, we’re getting a season that has a chance to be something very special.
The Jays’ front office has put together one of the most exciting teams in the game, and to have deprived Jays fans from even more opportunities to see some of the brightest young stars in the game in person, after being forced to Buffalo in 2020 and Dunedin and Buffalo for much of 2021, would have been a crime. Or at least something close to a crime. And there were days where it certainly didn’t feel like this was going to go any other way — days where it seemed like the players were, rightfully, going to dig in, and the owners were shamefully going to bury their own product to preserve an increasingly player-unfriendly status quo. But now, after a rollercoaster of negotiations and weeks having little to talk about beyond collective bargaining, we now can finally say that a whole, full summer summer of Vlad, and Bo, and Springer, and Teoscar, and Berríos, and Romano, and Gausman, and Manoah, and Ryu is actually going to happen. We can finally get as full-on pumped about it as we rightfully should.
Better still, there will undoubtedly be more players added to that group of new Blue Jays stars, too. Possibly as soon as today, as the transaction freeze that the lockout brought along with it will be lifted once the agreement is officially ratified by the league.
In other words, this may not be the last post of the day around here. WHAT A WORLD!!!
As for the agreement itself, there are particulars to be sorted through and thoughts to be had about whether the players got a fair enough deal here — and, judging by reports that the executive subcommittee all voted against the deal, but were overruled by individual player reps, that may be a pretty big conversation in the coming days — but for now I’ll leave that to the labour experts out there, because nothing in this document will mean more to fans than the fact that baseball can get back to business, 162 games will be played, and players can report to spring training as early as tomorrow.
I KINGDOM FOR SOME “BEST SHAPE OF HIS LIFE” STORIES! BRING IT ON! BRING ON THE PHOTOS! BRING ON BUS RIDES TO BRADENTON AND FORT MYERS!
Of course, some details are a little more fundamental to the sport than whatever is in the new economic arrangement between owners and players. The designated hitter is no more, as pitchers in the National League will no longer be required to hit. And the league’s playoff structure will be expanded to include 12 teams. In the sober light of day, after the transaction frenzy dies down, maybe more than just the purists will come to regret those moves. But they’re something I know I can certainly live with in exchange for this deal getting done and the game pulling itself out of this legal limbo they’ve been in since December.
Other changes will include doubleheaders — which will be used to make up many of the games missed due to the abbreviated spring training — returning to a full nine innings, and extra innings rules going back to normal. Eventually the institution of a pitch clock and the banning of the shift may also come out of this, though apparently not right away.
As for the economic stuff, as he’s done throughout this process, the Athletic’s Evan Drellich has laid out some of the gorier details here:
There is a lot to digest — more than what I’ve covered in this brief post. But, really, for now, I think there’s only one thing worth focusing on, and it’s the fact that baseball is back! IT’S ACTUALLY BACK! THEY DIDN’T FUCK IT UP! HOLY SHIT!!!
Now go sign Freddie Freeman!!!
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Hallelujah!!!
Amen to that. Now let the excitement begin!