With the 2020 Season Nearly in Place, MLB Must Mend Its Relationship with Fans

If and when baseball gets underway in 2020, Major League Baseball must find a way to mend its relationship with their paying customers.

For the past three months, baseball fans have clamored for any good news regarding the start of the 2020 season. 

Now, after weeks of dragging the game of baseball through the mud, Major League Baseball has implemented a 60-game season, per multiple reports. As far as the league is concerned, there will be baseball in 2020...for now.

If we have learned anything from this charade between the owners and the players, nothing is certain until the word "official" is tied to any announcement or report. And the season MLB is planning to implement is contingent on the players union signing off on two issues:

• Whether or not players can report to camp by July 1
• The Players Association will "agree on the Operating Manual which contains the health and safety protocols necessary to give us the best opportunity to conduct and complete our regular season and Postseason."

It sounds simple enough. However, to reiterate, until the agreement is chiseled in stone, it remains a mere hope. 

Thankfully, the initial reaction seems positive.

While there is growing optimism that the players will accept, the past three months have given even the most optimistic people (like myself) reason to proceed with caution. It's a damning reality that even amid a global pandemic, the owners and the players made themselves out to be each other's enemies when they should have signed a temporary treaty so they could properly engage with the real adversary of the 2020 season: COVID-19.

As Sports Illustrated's Stephanie Apstein wrote, MLB's most recent efforts to squeeze a 60-game season in 66 days could all be for naught. Given the several positive tests throughout baseball and spikes in multiple states, COVID-19 could prove to be too big a foe in 2020. Maybe there's a better hope for 2021, but the very real possibility remains: COVID-19 could wreak havoc on the sport, shutting down operations yet again. Only this time, many more players, coaches, and staff would be exposed to the virus.

At minimum, it's a damn shame that the league and the players had to engage in a labor war while more than 40 million Americans remain unemployed. Choose whichever side you want. The reality is we all lost—the league, the players, the media, and most importantly, the fans. 

Most likely, baseball's paying customers will not be permitted to attend games in 2020. In the best case scenario, any attendance will be very, very limited. With fans forced to keep their distance, MLB could not afford to alienate any of its fans during this process. Unfortunately for the game of baseball, they did exactly that.

The mistrust in baseball isn't exclusive to the owners and the players. Now, it's clear the fans can no longer trust either side. And with the current CBA set to expire in December of 2021, fans have no reason to believe the two sides can mend their turbulent relationship and avoid a work stoppage. After all, if a global pandemic didn't quell the greed-laden wedge between the owners and players, why should fans believe they can get their act together when circumstances are potentially back to normal?

So yes, even when there's a glimmer of hope, we've been taught even in the most dire of circumstances, MLB can't get the job done. The league and the players could not have mishandled this situation any worse. And now, the league has a broken relationship with its fans that must be mended.

There was a time when COVID-19 was the sole enemy of the baseball world. As previously mentioned, there's a very real possibility the season still gets derailed by it. And in the future, MLB will try to sell how COVID-19 impacted the 2020 season in years to come. However, I'm willing to bet there will be a large number of fans that will remember the insatiable greed that threatened baseball just as much as COVID-19.

The fact that a large number of fans are still clamoring for baseball after this three-month masquerade shows how many people still love baseball. It's now up to MLB to be proactive, not complacent. The healing process must begin now.

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