In This One, Isolated Sense, Please Pay Less Attention to Baseball

Major League Baseball made its latest round of proposals to the MLB Players' Association this week, as the two sides circle each other like two overserved stockbrokers in an insufferably hip country club bar after one accused the other of cheating at golf. The inevitable lockout doesn't begin for almost six months, and it won't affect the 2027 season unless it lasts at least three or four months more, but the league and the union would each like your attention, please. They're both rich. This fight is really only worth it if one of them looks cool and tough as they beat the other in a sloppy, lurching fistfight.

I'm not going to lay out the points of the league's latest proposal in much detail. As usual, they're proposing reforms that look superficially sensible but which would massively favor the owners, and which are infeasible and unrealistic, anyway. This far out from the real fight, they're just marshaling support from anyone else in the bar who looks big or interested, or who might be attracted to them if they win. The players, the party being accused of misconduct (baselessly), keep making affronted noises and trying to loudly explain that they don't want to fight, while secretly hoping for the chance to land a counterpunch without consequences.

I'm begging you: ignore all of this. Ignore it, at the very least, until the first week of November. There's a great baseball season unfolding around us. It's messy in places, but it's highly competitive. We have surprise contenders, transcendent individual performers, and some juicy narratives surrounding teams who need to win now and others who look like they've already missed their chance. There are cool new veins of data being tapped to deepen our understanding of the game, and there are teams who play a fun, aggressive style of baseball almost everywhere you turn. This is one of the most intriguing rookie classes in years. The baseball is great.

It's my job to show you all the fascinating things I see happening within baseball, but while we're here, let me also observe that the World Cup is well underway, furnishing a bevy of shared moments of exhilaration for millions of onlookers every day. The WNBA is firing on all cylinders, as usual. The NBA Playoffs were as good as they've been in a decade, capped by the Knicks winning their first title in over 50 years. There have been few better times to be a sports fan, including a sports fan online. Savor the great baseball, and share the emotional rollercoaster of the World Cup, and get geeked about Olivia Miles highlights.

Do not, however, pay attention to the peacocking, posturing and pleas of the billionaire owners about the business of the game. Do not, for that matter, spare a tear for the players, who see right through the attempts to establish exotic anchors in their negotiations by the owners and who are in no real danger of being meaningfully worse off at the end of this labor fight. Even 30 years ago, you did have to have a side, though you didn't have to attend to all the squabbling then, either. Now, the difference between a player's paycheck and yours is about the same, proportionally, as the one between a star player and the owner.

I am not urging you to ignore serious matters this summer; far from it. I need not ennumerate the things going on in local communities, North America, or the world that do deserve your attention and your passion; you can think of them yourself. If your passion for sport is all-consuming, you can still advocate for justice and fair labor practices, by supporting things like the upcoming strike by concessions workers at Target Field in Minneapolis or by paying attention to which teams properly celebrate Pride Month and which take their environmental footprint seriously. 

Those are appropriate places to place your attention, when it comes to serious matters in sport. Defy demands from owners for huge tax breaks or taxpayer dollars to build stadia. Advocate for reforms of youth programs that put rich White kids at huge advantages and for those that exploit young, poor people of color. Here's the dirty secret about the CBA negotiations: Nothing important will change. If you dislike the competitive balance of baseball, you're out of luck. Not only would a salary cap fail to address that, but a salary cap isn't going to happen, anyway. Neither is a change to the draft that would kill early free agency. Neither is players becoming free agents after just four years of service.

The eventual changes to the game will be felt, as they are after each and every CBA shifts the rules, but those changes will only make a meaningful difference to those of us already following the sport very closely—and they won't make owners much richer or poorer, or small-market teams much more or less likely to win anything. They're also far, far beyond my or your influence.

It's unhealthy to stare at and/or egg on the drunken losers vying for your attention. There's something better to devote your attention to in that bar. Go play darts, or watch soccer on TV. (Hey, that one works analogically, and literally!) When the fists start actually flying, see if there's any way you can limit the damage, but mostly, keep your own drink out of the way and try not to be one of the people whose statements the cops end up taking. 

Please, enjoy this summer. Watch a World Cup match every day, and skeet about it with your friends. Listen to baseball on the radio while you mow your lawn or shoot hoops with your kid. There's plenty to worry about in the world. The owners and the players' union are doing their jobs by worrying about how to divide billions of your dollars over the next half-decade, but it's not your job, and have you seen Jacob Misiorowski pitch?! Have you seen what Pete Crow-Armstrong is doing lately? Can you believe the White Sox are contenders? When it comes to sports, enjoy this summer, and pay no attention to the looming CBA fight. It's all hot air right now, and you have better things to do.