Baseball may be a “national pastime,” but a favorite pastime of baseball is labor disputes.
Since 1972, there have been 9 instances of strikes or lockouts in Major League Baseball (MLB).
Most recently, on Tuesday, the MLB’s owners failed to reach an agreement with the players union, resulting in the cancellation of 91 games across the league.
Baseball is a big business, with the average MLB team worth $2.2B. A lockout would affect everyone:
There’s also lost broadcast revenue and stadium workers that won’t get paid, among other things.
In short, players and owners can’t agree on things like a salary floor and the number of teams that make the playoffs.
Critics have been skewering MLB commissioner Rob Manfred for pushing a sport that’s already losing fans even closer to irrelevance.
Hopefully the parties can fix things before this pastime literally becomes a thing of the past.