Reese Kaplan -- An Upcoming Season Without Baseball

Sitting around rehashing baseball with, of course, a particular concentration on Mets memories, you can see how deeply ingrained the connection is between the fans and their team.  We hear stories of great expectations for wild success that fell completely apart, great pitching or hitting that no one ever saw coming, oddball fielding achievements (such as Bartolo Colon's behind-the-back flip to nab a runner at 1st base), and how we celebrated team achievements.

Yeah, those memories are great but afterwards I got to thinking about what is it that we are most anticipating if and when the 2022 season begins.  Tom Brennan commented recently that for one year the owners should offer an across-the-board discount to buy back fan interest and temper the disgruntlement both the owners and players have caused.  Some folks are vowing that if the season is less than 162 games then they will not spend a dime on Mets souvenirs nor will they attend a single game.  It's this type of bluster that has some roots in reality, so Tom's concept of a discount certainly has some merit.

When asked who is right and who is wrong, no one can positively agree.  The owners are doing enough things to be dubbed Ebeneezer around holiday time, yet at the same time the perennially losing union desperately wants to save face and summarily rejects whatever the owners propose.  To us fans they are both wrong and we are the ones who lose out most of all.

One debate that arises concerns whether or not the teams will broadcast their minor league games to fill the gaps caused by the lockout.  While no one has a particularly strong interest beyond mild curiosity about who's in the pipeline and how they perform, remember that anyone on the 40-man roster (your best and brightest prospects) would be included in the ban of playing.  Consequently minor league ball will include older AAAA types and people with definite performance holes in their game.  You might see better baseball at an independent league than in the forcibly revamped minors.  

Perhaps the best approach for people to take is to think about all of the time they normally spend watching, listening to and attending games.  Those many hours can be put to other uses, some of which can even be baseball-related.  Maybe the best thing disgruntled fans can do with their time is spend it teaching the game to the next generation of would-be players.  Who here does more than overeat and yell rudely during the occasional Little League games they attend?  The latter could be about the quality of the food, the discomfort of the seats, the calls made by the umpires or the humiliation caused by the level of play of their relatives who will likely develop both a disdain for the game and a strong sense of rejection towards their parents.  

Maybe some of these less-than-helpful relatives can instead spend time teaching how to judge the strike zone, how to field a position, how to read when it's a good time to attempt a steal, or how to vary the location in the strike zone to make it more challenging to the hitter.  It often seems that the stereotypes of the louts in the stands is based in reality.  With all of this non-Mets free time on everyone's hands, it would seem a more productive use of that new-found time would be in cultivating new fans for the future.

Of course, the probability of that happening is rather slim.  More likely folks will find other non-baseball ways of spending their evenings and weekends.  There's nothing wrong with that either.  In fact, an abandonment of the game might make more of an impact on the owners and players who realize that they are accelerating down the slippery slope to irrelevancy.  If only there appeared to be a serious effort on both sides to resolve things then fans might be a bit more patient.  There is not, consequently fans are beyond frustrated.  It doesn't appear to be likely to improve unless a surprise agreement materializes out of thin air by the end of the month.  Don't bet on that happening.