Reese Kaplan --- A Whole Lotta Nuthin' Going On

OK, the two sides are still miles apart and there doesn't appear to be much interest on either side in bringing about a resolution to the issues that are preventing the mutual acceptance of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).  

Think about the last time you were asked to present something to a client in the office.  You spend weeks (sometimes months) doing the research, convening internal meetings with your team, spend hours and hours proofreading the text, rehearsing the PowerPoint presentation and you allocate less time than is necessary to delve into your topics at a sufficient level of detail.  They may give you 90 minutes but you are coming in with at least double that amount of content to present in great detail.

Baseball as we see it today is very, very different.  The news came out today that the most recent hardcore negotiating session lasted just 15 minutes.  To give you a perspective on how little time that is, think about how long you wait to get seated in a restaurant for which you already have reservations!  

Now the problem here is that there are huge amounts of money involved, over 600 professional ballplayers, their agents, the team owners, the myriad of personnel associated with both sides (salaries, benefits, headcount, etc.)  It's understandable that everyone wants this agreement signed and to allow the baseball season to commence.  However, it appears there is more interest in who looks better than there is in finding a solution.  

If you sit and talk with your friends and family about who is right and who is wrong, there is a unified hostility towards both sides.  The fans are upset with the owners for their perceived greed just as much as they are with the players for their own money grabbing behavior.  

For most folks who work jobs that keep them going paycheck to paycheck or perhaps they have a reserve cushion of up to 6 months should their employer go out of business, the fact is that the minimum wage for a ballplayer is now $570,000 and the union is seeking a 36% bump to $750,000.  The delta between these numbers would represent perhaps 4 years' worth of salary to most fans.  

Then when you look at the owners who pay sub minimum wage (by Federal law!) to minor leaguers who now want to contract not only the number of teams but also the number of players that they must pay.  Now to be fair, there's not really a minor league organization in most business environments, but you'd think an employer would instead want to prepare their future team members the best they possibly could rather than making them drive Uber or wait tables or stock shelves to have enough pocket money for luxuries like paying rent, electricity, Internet and car payments.  

While all of these actions are taking place, the fans sit back and just shake their heads in wonder that no one is acting like adults here and feeling any urgency to agree to terms.  As a result, the game that allows us about 3 hours almost every day to forget about our work and family stresses and just escape within the fabric of the ballgame.  

Unlike many of you, I will be relocating far from the USA later this year and in a 14-hour time zone difference.  Consequently, the night games for you are day games for me, there is precious little baseball coverage in the media and I'm going to have to become accustomed to a new language, a new culture and a new way of life.  

For the remainder of 2022 if there is no baseball I can probably withstand it given these challenges, but what happens the following season when the newness of my Malaysian environment has somewhat worn off?  Will the distance make me remain detached, will my frustration over this clown show of negotiation make me forget the game I grew up loving, or will I feel the same joys and frustration in my heart and stomach as the Mets succeed or fail?  I really don't know.