Baseball is a balm. It is an indicator of the approach of spring and the advent of winter. It is part of the fabric of our American life, where a 162-game schedule plays out either in the lively foreground or muted background of our days. Baseball is a constant presence that brings normalcy to our lives, which have become increasingly more fractured and isolated.

The lockout imposed by the stewards of baseball (the 30 owners of MLB franchises and Commissioner Rob Manfred) and the failures of these same guardians of the game to achieve an agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association resulting in the loss of Opening Day and the first two series of the regular season, is an indictment of the public trust that has been placed in their hands.

It’s difficult to get overly overwrought or lament the loss of a spate of regular season baseball games when Vladimir Putin has launched a war in Ukraine and our media feeds are being besieged by graphic images of death and destruction.

But baseball should be a respite from the ills that plague us. Baseball provided a diversion from the drudgery of the pandemic in 2020 with a shortened 60-game regular season. The fall of 2021, where the World Series between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves showcased crowded stadiums and a glimpse of post-pandemic life, was both illusory and real. We could return to something approaching normal; it was possible.

What is confounding and stupefying is how the owners and their minions can constantly fail to correctly read the room. The room being baseball fans and the larger American public. How can an industry that is losing interest in its brand and losing fans, so blithely ignore its declining position in our American society?

Baseball needs to do what it does best: and that is be there. It’s as simple as that. Just show up.

The lockout and impasse in negotiations is one plank of an orchestrated plan on the part of major league baseball owners to lower costs – not only on the major league level – but also at the minor league level. Displaying a profound lack of wisdom and judgment, which seems to be the defining rule and not the exception, Major League Baseball owners have decimated the relationship between small town America and the national pastime by napalming 42 minor league baseball teams in December of 2020. In the Northeast, the short-season Single A New York-Penn League became as extinct as the Golden Bamboo Lemur. Major League Baseball’s lawyers are currently arguing in federal court that minor league baseball players should continue to not get paid for spring training.

Continuing in their quest to save dough and pad their profit margins, the loss of Opening Day and the first two series of the regular season has a negligible effect on the owners’ bottom lines. However, players will lose money. The lockout was orchestrated to put pressure on the players to accept a less than equitable agreement, which makes it that much harder to embrace this game.

As I have been described by my friend Dan-o, “You are the only person that still watches baseball.” Our mutual friend Kell would disagree with that assertion, but hardball fans are vanishing faster than the secrecy behind a Russian oligarch’s Swiss bank account.

In the end, the owners were given a shiny bauble to preserve and protect. And they are completely incapable and utterly lacking in understanding how the game should be managed, cherished, and presented to its loyal fans. After our nation has struggled through a pandemic, a return to normalcy would be a welcome relief from the isolation many people endured. Baseball is a conduit to people. It connects people to each other at the local tavern, where two strangers can gripe about why some dumbass manager ruined their night by bringing in a train wreck of a relief pitcher. It’s a family returning from their daughter’s Little League game, to watch the big club play some ball on their family room’s tv, while they chow down on some pizza from their local spot.

That’s baseball. It connects. It’s always there.

Fuck the owners. And fuck Rob Manfred.