We've spent a lot of time talking about the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) which has kept the owners and players on opposite sides of the fence since the previous one expired on December 2nd of last year. For six weeks the two sides appeared to be twiddling their collective thumbs with no meetings taking place. It was not until missing regular season games became very much a possibility that some traction started to take place to bring about a resolution. Both the "greedy" owners and "spoiled" players are blamed by the fans and the media. Maybe they felt it was time to make a gesture to open the door to the ticket buying public who were preparing to slam it closed for good.
I'm not going to get into the specifics of the many proposals pushed back and forth over this past week when they did indeed meet every day. Better late than never, apparently.
So now the issue is how long the baseball season will be if and when it begins. The normal 162 game schedule is not going to happen if the owners were honest about their need to resolve things by the end of the day on Monday (which extended into Tuesday). I'm next thinking 154 games which would be the size of the pre-1961 schedule and there is precedent for how to adapt to that number of home and away tickets to be sold. The issue is how you would divide up the intradivisional games vs. the ones with opponents outside the division (or outside your own league).
Certainly it's possible to think that for a one-year hiatus they may shelve the interleague play in order to figure out away to divvy up the schedule. While we always look forward to the 3 games at Citifield and 3 games at Yankee Stadium, does anyone really have a burning desire to see the Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays or Oakland A's? In the beginning there might have been some extra revenue as these unusual opponent match-ups were a novelty but aside from the Mets/Yankees games that luster has pretty much evaporated.
The other variable that will enter into this schedule mix is the as yet unsigned new round of playoffs. They may feel that a shorter schedule is fine if there is a premium set of games to be played in October that haven't existed in the past.
The one positive thing about a delayed start is the impact weather plays on both Spring Training and the early season Major League games. In Florida rain is a given and the number of rainouts each Spring are something you need to pencil into the schedule. Then in the last day of March and the beginning of April it's not unheard of for games to take place in near freezing temperatures and even occasionally for snow to make an appearance. None of these weather conditions are good for gate revenue for the owners, so missing out on the first eight games or so of the season isn't the big revenue drain that vanished summer ticket sales would be.
For now all of us awaiting the delayed start to Spring Training and the corresponding shortened Major League schedule are see-sawing back and forth between frustration and hostility. Both of those feelings can be addressed relatively easily. The one the owners don't want to see happen is a lack of interest altogether. That last one could be fatal.
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