Baseball would be better off canceling the 2020 season than implementing sham plan

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was concerned that the ultimate undoing of the 2020 Major League Baseball season was probably going to come down to money.

I wish I was wrong. But it now appears inevitable that owners and players are going to go war over how to divide the reduced revenue that would be generated by a baseball season consisting of about half the games as usual — and the distinct possibility that none of the contests will be played in front of ballparks full of fans. Owners and players agreed in March, allegedly, to an arrangement in which the athletes would not be asked to take more than a 50 percent pay cut to play a shortened season. Now, because it appears the games will be played in empty ballpark, owners want further give backs. Players have declared “this means war.”

As far as I am concerned, this is the final straw. Let the 2020 baseball season die a dignified death. I’ll look forward to watching the St. Louis Cardinals and their foes play again in 2021. I hope.

It simply makes no sense to ruin baseball in so many ways for a short term fix.

First, the game cannot take a labor dispute right now. Baseball got lucky in 1998 when the exploits of Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire and his Chicago Cubs rival Sammy Sosa captivated fans turned off by a long financial standoff between billionaire owners and multi-millionaire players. Seats that sat painfully empty were suddenly full again for love of the long ball. But I wouldn’t be so sure fans would come back this time. While it was a great tonic at the time, the story of McGwire and Sosa was later found to be tainted by performance enhancing drugs.

The talk of the country back then is something we try not to mention now. Back then, it was just irritating that baseball wasn’t being played as rich people tried to angle for who got the bigger portion of caviar. But when 20 plus percent of the country is unemployed because of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 80,000 Americans, it would be a pretty serious kick when the nation is down to publicly fight over big bucks while people hope they can find a job before their unemployment benefits run out.

Second, the plans to get the game back on the field seem to be half-baked at best. National League fans are going to get the designated hitter — an abomination that will ruin the game as it was intended to be played forever — jammed down their throat as a way to facilitate makeshift divisions populated by NL and American League teams.

Beyond the cash considerations, a number of players have expressed concerns about the game’s ability to keep them and their families safe. It’s going to be unfortunate if clubs see their season adversely affected by key players getting sick. What if a club suddenly has an outbreak that puts it in a condition where it is unable to continue? Worse, what happens if someone on one of the teams gets seriously ill or even dies? It’s going to be pretty much impossible to feel good about games being put on for our entertainment for the rest of the season if that should happen. So what are they going to do, shut everything down at that point?

It would be great to be able to see the games again. Baseball is inseparable from the fabric of America. But there is a right time and a wrong time for everything, and it doesn’t seem like there is going to be a right time to play baseball in 2020. There are too many unanswered questions, too many risks and there is too little to be gained from trying to rig something up to allow games to be played.

If MLB takes off 2020, instead of trying to cram things in a shortened schedule on short notice, to make them right. I’d suggest, instead of more interleague play, the designated hitter and makeshift divisions, the commissioners office strongly consider getting rid of the DH, divorcing the National and American Leagues and putting baseball back where it was in its glory days of the 1980s.

Watching the Cardinals play the Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins or Oakland Athletics has been done. I would much rather see more opportunity for teams to play their traditional rivals. It was much more exciting to see the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets and San Francisco Giants come to town two or three times a year than clubs that St. Louis isn’t directly competing with for a postseason berth. The American League and National League aren’t supposed to be brothers, they’re supposed to be rivals. The World Series was a battle over which brand of baseball was the best — not a contest between artificially created circuits with flexible rules.

Let baseball be baseball. That can’t happen before 2021. So, rest in peace 2020 season. It’s time to face it. We’re going to have to let it go.

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.