Baseball needs an adult to step up and stop this madness: Sherman

Dear Adults: You are in the room, right? This isn’t all just going to be “take my ball and go home” day, is it? Name calling? Intractability? There is going to be a moment in which a leader or three rises above the familiar roles, the rhetoric, the threats, isn’t there? It should start with …

Dear Adults:

You are in the room, right?

This isn’t all just going to be “take my ball and go home” day, is it? Name calling? Intractability?

There is going to be a moment in which a leader or three rises above the familiar roles, the rhetoric, the threats, isn’t there?

It should start with you, Commissioner Rob Manfred. A statement can be this simple: If the political and medical worlds give their blessings, we are playing regular season major league baseball beginning July 3, continuing through the Independence Day weekend and — we hope — going without interruptions until there is a World Series.

Period. End of statement.

Does this mean MLB loses negotiating leverage should Manfred commit publicly to something so resolute? You bet. But the act should be designed to compel union leader Tony Clark to behave similarly. To commit to this. To see that pay for the rest of this season is important. But not more important than all the other seasons that would be so negatively impacted if somehow this one did not take place over dollars and zero common sense.

If players want to opt out because of health or financial concerns, that is fine. This will be an opt-in system. But Manfred and Clark should reverse engineer this. Say the game is restarting at the most advantageous time to help the future of the sport and we are going to figure out how to make that happen. Mutual loss of leverage.

Or you can keep passing offers back and forth that you know will incite the other. Both sides are expert at this, trained through the years at knowing just what buttons to push. Apparently, here in the kindergarten portion of the program, a pandemic, widespread death and sickness and nationwide financial devastation is not enough to stop the all too familiar behavior.

Agree to agree that the sides do not like each other. But boy do you need each other. Owners can play hardball, but they are playing hardball with the engines of the sport. No one grew up wanting to watch an owner. Conversely, players should not get locked in on this single monetary issue. If the owners actually don’t blink, that means every player makes zero the rest of this season and the carryover to future years will be even more financially calamitous.

With goodwill, there are mechanisms to defer fuller portions of salaries to the future, raise the minimum wage in coming years, remove luxury tax penalties so if big market clubs want to spend in a tough market they are not penalized for doing so. There are avenues to fairness. By pledging to resolution rather than rhetoric, Manfred and Clark are compelled to better will, if not goodwill. Maybe they won’t lose their jobs — though maybe they should if they can’t reach agreement considering that historic times demand historic leadership — but the loss of reputation would be absolute if they both promise solutions and fail amid familiar bluster.

Let’s also add a deadline as a motivator: June 5 so that players could be fully in camp by June 12 and have three weeks of spring training 2.0 before a full slate on July 3.

The adults see it, right? Baseball has a chance — rather than continuing to fulfill our lowest expectations — to renew the concept of a national pastime. Think of an Independence Day weekend of not just all-day games, but celebrating first responders and medical personnel. Think of doing it to a captive audience that does not yet have the NBA or NHL. Think of MLB being, gulp, a leader rather than so persistently running down its own product. There is really a chance to help the institution long term — good for all involved — and boost the nation — good for everybody.

This will not be easy. It will take boldness to go first. That should be the commissioner of baseball. Clark then needs to follow. It might mean public statements from other veteran agents if they think Scott Boras is being obstructionist.

I admire Boras’ fervor to protect player rights. And the players do have rights. Yet, I also believe the March 26 agreement states that if games are played without paying fans then another negotiation about player compensation needs to be had. That doesn’t mean players should have a system forced upon them. It means negotiate. Do what the union historically does best, sacrifice a little of today for the betterment of players in the future — think Curt Flood.

There is a solution that begins with putting away what are currently sabres or rattles, and taking the risk of leadership. That has peril, but think of the danger if every other major team sport in the world plays and you don’t.

Adults wouldn’t let that happen.

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