BASEBALL IS IN HUGE TROUBLE, YET ROB MANFRED WANTS TO DISCUSS … EXPANSION?
He’s at the bizarre point where Raleigh is mentioned as a possible site — Durham, Chapel Hill, Kevin Costner — while he changes the subject from a haunting salary cap that players again will reject
In a matter of hours, or lackluster innings, nothing will “thrive” about Major League Baseball. College football awaits another hellbent regular season. The NFL, upon which this country of diehards and gamblers is centered, begins the first Thursday evening of September. Next year, in about 15 months, the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement means baseball is slaughtered when players walk away from the owners.
Every discussion about 2029 is futile. Don’t tell commissioner Rob Manfred, who wants to expand with two franchises and realign leagues before he retires. In his dazed mind, he believes he’s running a flourishing operation, saying recently, “When I look at the game right now — the game, the business — our sport is really thriving.”
Thrive jive, I call it.
In truth, the industry should contract teams — Miami, Pittsburgh, the Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay, Minnesota — rather than add more groups of inept pitchers in Salt Lake City, Portland or Raleigh. Did someone actually say Raleigh? We know Cal Raleigh is the Big Dumper, with the widest rump in the majors, but is he so potent that he could welcome a team in his home state of North Carolina?
This is screwballish stuff written in The Athletic when Manfred has done zero about an impending lockout except, well, anger Bryce Harper with salary-cap yapping that will be silenced again. Until the boss conveys feeble ownership wishes without using torpedo bats in attack mode, he can forget Raleigh/Chapel Hill/Durham/Kevin Costner — and all smaller markets — and realize baseball might not exist beyond pickleball in the next decade.
Baseball is not thriving, Rob, when broadcasting deals will fall so far behind the NFL and NBA that MLB could be relegated to a second level. Baseball is not thriving, Rob, when the Savannah Bananas sell out stadiums where teams have plenty of seats. Baseball is not thriving, Rob, when healthcare plans are rising significantly for employees — another story from The Athletic, which has good writers and lame writers taking drags from Raleighs.
He says talks with media networks are “a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle” — when most of the pieces are on the floor. Funny, the NFL has made more than $120 billion — not counting its new 10-percent ownership of ESPN — and wants to opt out from most deals in 2029. The NBA begins its first season of a $77 billion package.
Baseball? There’s no crying, Rob, but you won’t have a choice.
For now, dream on.
“I think if we expand, it provides us with an opportunity to geographically realign,” Manfred said. “I think we could save a lot of wear and tear on our players in terms of travel. I think our postseason format would be even more appealing for entities like ESPN because you’d be playing out of the East, out of the West and that 10 o’clock where we sometimes get Boston-Anaheim would be two West Coast teams. That 10 o’clock slot that’s a problem for us sometimes becomes a real opportunity for our West Coast audience.”
Wear and tear? Has he thought about wear and tear if they don’t play games for a year?
Baseball is in deep trouble. Expansion is a way to convince owners that billions in fees might show up, but bluffing isn’t allowed. Manfred successfully changed the subject from Bryce Harper to Raleigh on a broadcast out of Williamsport, home of the Little League. Oh, Nashville had been strongly mentioned as an expansion hopeful, but Raleigh appeared because … oh, the White Sox might try to move to Tennessee without any hope of a new Chicago stadium. That should be the real story: the future of the Sox and the Marlins and the Pirates and the Twins and the Rays and even the Athletics before Las Vegas.
The only issue is the salary cap. The only issue.
The players will say no.
If the owners also walk, there is no baseball in America.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.