CALLING ALL DISRUPTORS: TIME TO THREATEN MLB WITH A RIVAL LEAGUE

If the NFL was challenged by an AFL and the NBA by an ABA, why can’t a group of young, wealthy, innovative upstarts create competition for a dying monopoly protected too long by an antitrust exemption

     The puppet commissioner for 30 out-of-touch men, three-quarters of whom are billionaires, officially lost me when he practiced his golf swing between final bargaining sessions. Later, as he announced Major League Baseball was killing Opening Day, Rob Manfred laughed during the news conference.

     “Have no clue how he has the ability to laugh about anything right now,” tweeted veteran pitcher Michael Lorenzen, speaking for many of us. “Mind is blown.”

     Also blown would be any lie detector strapped to Manfred’s conscience. “The concerns of our fans are at the very top of our consideration list,’’ he said, speaking for owners who initiated the lockout, refused to meet with the MLB Players Association for months, don’t give a Cracker Jack about the fans and are hellbent on deep-sixing a season that would harpoon the sport once and for all. Know how ugly this is getting for the owners? The Face Of The Game, Mike Trout, abandoned his vanilla, controversy-free approach to superstardom and ripped into Manfred like a 89-mph fastball over the plate.

     “Instead of bargaining in good faith, MLB locked us out,’’ Trout wrote on social media. “Instead of negotiating a fair deal, Rob canceled games.’’

     The cavalier stoppage of play by the owners, on Day 90 of an impasse that could last months and slaughter what is left of a terminally ill patient, got me thinking about our 21st-century world. We live in times of disruption, correct? Wouldn’t this be the perfect time for a collection of young, wealthy, brazen, baseball-liking, legal-brawling mavericks to swoop in and challenge the old, crusty, creatively impotent, impossibly pigheaded overlords who’ve controlled the sport as they please?

     Are you ready for a takeover, a revolution, a coup?

     A rival league? Competition for the fat cats?

     I’ve been ready since baseball first backstabbed me in the ‘90s.

     Social media changed how we communicate. Ride-sharing services buried taxis. Websites crushed newspapers. The iPhone is a more vital body part than either ear, having rendered listening obsolete. I could go on, but MLB is a worn-down Lincoln Continental that should be run out of the slow lane and off the road by a Tesla, if not a Bugatti. Calling all investment capitalists, tech dudes, crypto cronies and mega-follower influencers. Surely, a few grew up enjoying or at least paying attention to baseball, even as members of two generations that the owners have ignored. Want to change the world for the better? Band together and save a sport from the self-destructive coots trying to ruin it.

     It wasn’t too long ago when the almighty NFL, now the most popular and most prosperous league in this country’s history, was forced into a merger by the fun, whipsmart American Football League. The same formula allowed the American Basketball Association, with its red, white and blue ball and freewheeling style, to successfully threaten the NBA. I’m aware MLB has been protected by an antitrust exemption that lets Manfred and the owners engage in unfair labor practices and whatever underhanded behavior they want. How grotesquely fitting to have reached the 100th anniversary of a Supreme Court decision that somehow exempted MLB from federal antitrust laws because, in the Court’s warped view, the business of the league didn’t constitute “interstate commerce.’’

     With public disapproval of the owners now sinking into an inescapable gutter, this would be a fine time to challenge the exemption. Hire lawyers who can take down the MLB attorneys. Hell, if Robert D. Manfred Jr. is the best lawyer the owners could find as their public face, maybe the legal bout wouldn’t be so difficult.

     This isn’t a time to terminate baseball. It’s a time to entomb the owners. Just judging by the decent number of games I generally attend a year — at Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium, Petco Park, Oracle Park, PNC Park in Pittsburgh, wherever I might be, after covering thousands of games during my sports media career — let’s not conflate a kneecapping of the 2022 season into an inflection point that requires the immediate offing of a sport.

     Let’s use this dead period to appeal to new potential custodians with sensibilities, patience and shitloads of money. You don’t think the unpaid, locked-out players are all ears right now? Bryce Harper, one of the few dynamic stars who’ve been marketed properly by a half-asleep and bygone industry, photoshopped an image of him wearing a Japanese league uniform and posted it on Instagram. “Are @yomiuri.giants you up? Got some time to kill,’’ he wrote, then mentioning his agent, Scott Boras, “I know you got @borascorp number. Let’s talk.’’ This was followed by a tweet from ex-major-leaguer Danny Valencia, who noted: “Mike Trout, the best player in the show, has 1.9 million followers on IG, playing in Los Angeles. Tyler Herro, good player for the (NBA’s Miami) Heat, nowhere near Mike Trout-good, has 2.3 million followers. Why?’’

     Answer: The average age of a MLB fan, now 58, grows another year older with each passing season, while the NBA and NFL figured out long ago that four million babies are born each year in the U.S. — babies who grow up to be sports fans and refuse to be overlooked and insulted because of their youth. Manfred acknowledged baseball is faced with more entertainment options then ever before, yet he and the owners have yet to figure out how to compete in the modern world — and scrapping the first two series of the regular season only sends the message that kids of all ages never again should waste time, money and passion on this antiquated dreck.

     Rather than taking the same torch to Manfred, who is paid handsomely to be the owners’ spokesman and public piñata, let’s appeal to saviors who don’t see baseball as a lost cause. Look, it’s time to blow up everything: shorten the regular season to 120 or so games, introduce a 20-second pitch clock that Manfred refused to implement unilaterally the past seven years, encourage free speech by players on social media, place more local games on free TV channels and streaming platforms and reduce the emphasis on analytics that has anesthetized the game on the field and turned front offices into nerd science labs.

     As union executive director Tony Clark said: “The game has suffered damage for a while now. The game has changed. The game has been manipulated. The value inherent, and how players are respected and viewed, has changed. Players have been commoditized in a way that is really hard to explain in the grand scheme of things.”

     Not to be lost in the week’s damage is the resignation of Derek Jeter, still a Face Of The Game, as CEO and shareholder of the Miami Marlins. As smart a businessman as he was a player, Jeter wants no part of a beleaguered franchise that won’t place enough profits into the player payroll — in a sport of owners who care more about hoarding their share of the $10.7-billion annual pie than winning championships. “The vision for the future of the franchise is different than the one I signed up to lead,’’ Jeter said.

     You might say he returned from baseball’s dark side to its right side. In fact, he is just the sort of revered icon, only 47, who could influence disruptors to form a rival league. Canceling games, with more schedule-chopping to come, is the “disastrous outcome’’ that Rob Manfred feared.

     As the owners lay down for long naps, it’s time for a sneak attack.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “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.