PHILADELPHIA – There is a dissonance around baseball right now that’s difficult to reconcile. The product on the field is tremendous, elite talents in every market, freer than ever to flash personality as the game sheds a long-embedded hidebound culture. Case in point, American League starter Dylan Cease and catcher Shea Langeliers wearing mics and talking through pitch calls during a shutout first at the 96th All-Star Game on Tuesday. And business is good, with year-to-year attendance up and ratings strong, the MLB Draft on NBC and Home Run Derby on Netflix demonstrative of MLB’s attempts to reach new audiences in a fragmented media world.
These should be happy times and as the Midsummer Classic nodded to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing during the pre-game festivities, with the starting lineups autographing a mock parchment lineup on their way to the field, and a 4-0 American League win over the National League, they very much are.
At the same time, they very much aren’t with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire Dec. 1, the sides not even on the same spectrum they could be on opposite sides of and the threat of an extended labour disruption as real as it’s been since the summer of 2002, when a late-season strike was averted just before the deadline.
Early proposals featuring maximalist demands from each side are demonstrative of the divide and their fight for control of the narrative spilled into the all-star week festivities during the annual visits by commissioner Rob Manfred and players union head Bruce Meyer with members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
Meyer accused the league, “of working to convince fans, the consumers of their product … that they don’t have hope, or they shouldn’t have hope, or that the product that they’re paying to consume in record numbers is somehow broken.”
“I think it’s perverse,” he said.
Manfred, speaking after Meyer, immediately took a dig at his counterpart, saying “I have a brief 30-minute opening statement that I have prepared.” The commissioner then continued to defend owners’ pursuit of a salary cap as a necessary response to the competitive balance issues he said fans continually identify as a concern, according to their research.
“Our process of listening to fans is actually very sophisticated,” said Manfred. “We use professional pollsters. We cut our demographics, big market, small market, by age, by avidity. We pay attention to all of those things. We also do focus groups to get a more granular feel for what people are saying and take the information as it comes. People feel a certain way on a certain topic, they’re concerned about a work stoppage, that’s something that we take into account thinking about what we’re doing.”
For that reason, the contours both sides are carving into their negotiating positions are just as important as the public’s reaction to them, since owners and players are each aiming to use fan pressure against the other. The battle for hearts and minds will make this perhaps the most public and information-dense negotiation yet, with MLB’s Level the Playing Field ad campaign the latest salvo.
Expect the labour situation to regularly shift from background to foreground to background for the rest of the season, all while the product shines, the way it did before 43,916 at Citizens Bank Park.
The American League put up a three-spot in the first against Phillies ace Cristopher Sanchez on Cody Bellinger’s two-run single and an RBI single from Yankees teammate, while Cease proceeded to strike out Kyle Schwarber on a slider, Juan Soto on a 98 m.p.h. fastball and, after a Freddie Freeman walk, CJ Abrams on a slider.
“I always want to strike guys out,” said Cease. “I really just wanted to throw strikes and not walk guys. Before the game, I was kind of pondering, do I start out with a changeup? I thought it’d be funny. But (Justin) Verlander talked me out of it so we started off with a heater and I’m glad we did.”
Cease is also glad he decided to get mic’d up, feeling that an All-Star Game “ is always a good time for it,” while providing himself a memento he could watch to remember the experience years down the line.
“The fear is you go out, you talk, you have fun and then you get whacked and it’s a little embarrassing,” he added. “I think it’s good for the game. Fans like to see it and to be honest, I had a really good time doing it.”
Teammate Ernie Clement had a good time making a couple strong defensive plays, the first frustrating fans by picking a Kyle Schwarber smash in the third, the other stealing a hit from Dodgers centre-fielder Andy Pages, who made the title-saving catch against him in the ninth inning of World Series Game 7.
Clement’s mind immediately went there and “I was kind of pointing at him, just so he knows that I know that I kind of got him back,” he said. “But I would have loved for it to be the other way around. …
“It’s all love,” he continued. “I have a lot of admiration for the way he plays the game. Pages just seems like such a good dude and he made one of the best plays in post-season history, World Series history, given the circumstances. Just getting him back a little bit, it felt pretty good.”
Other highlights included a 433-foot homer by White Sox third baseman Miguel Vargas in the eighth, followed by a clean inning by Blue Jays closer Louis Varland, while Aroldis Chapman and Bryan Baker locked things down in the ninth.
So, memorable day all around, especially for the Blue Jays, who had John Schneider managing the AL side with his coaching and training staff, a reward for that trip to the World Series a year ago. Schneider and pitching coach Pete Walker could also breathe a sigh of relief, not having to stress over how to cover the nine innings.
While Toronto’s hopes for hosting the 2028 All-Star Game are being complicated by MLB’s desire to participate in the L.A. Olympics, the 2027 contest is slated for Wrigley Field in Chicago. And despite a time of immense prosperity and opportunity in the game, the path from here to there is shaping up as an immensely bumpy one.