MLB Commish Rob Manfred Now “Not Confident” There Will Be A 2020 Baseball Season

Just a few days ago, this was the word from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred:

And now, after another weekend of aborted proposals, Manfred may be facing many of the reality many of us have:

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN on Monday he’s “not confident” there will be a 2020 baseball season and that “as long as there’s no dialogue” with the MLB Players Association, “that real risk is going to continue.”

In a conversation with Mike Greenberg for ESPN’s “The Return of Sports” special, Manfred walked back comments made to ESPN last week, when he said “unequivocally we are going to play Major League Baseball this year” and pegged the likelihood at “100%.”

“I’m not confident. I think there’s real risk; and as long as there’s no dialogue, that real risk is gonna continue,” Manfred said when asked if he was confident there would be a season.

“It’s just a disaster for our game, absolutely no question about it. It shouldn’t be happening, and it’s important that we find a way to get past it and get the game back on the field for the benefit of our fans,” he said.

Manfred said the MLBPA’s “decision to end good-faith negotiations” and the need for an agreement with the union on health-and-safety protocols “were really negative in terms of our efforts.”

Sounds like some classic MLB buck passing after last night’s ESPN 30 for 30 on the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase reminded us of the last time the league turned a blind eye to reality. Except there is one big difference between MLB’s head in the sand back then with PEDs and the half-assed way they’ve handled this season: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa initially had a positive impact on the sport.

Conversely, this process has done nothing to endear America’s pastime to fans. We’ve had players look like overpaid divas, owners come off as money grubbers who also desperately wanted to curtail player salaries in the process after being raked over a barrel for years. And fans of this sport, who’ve had every cent squeezed out of their fandom as baseball’s popularity has swooned, are the ones who’ll be left to suffer. They already have seen their sport largely marginalized compared to the ubiquity of the NFL or NBA, the cult status of NHL, or the rising fandom of soccer and eSports.

It becomes increasingly more likely that MLB fans will just move on. Baseball’s average viewer age in 2017 was 57 years old and it’s hard to see how a season off would do anything to reverse that trend. Add in a pandemic that’s not exactly helping out that demographic and it’s a legitimately worrisome time for baseball.

MLB’s only hope might be that some of these players come back loaded to the gills with McGwire and Sosa’s secret stashes to capture the American imagination again. Unless Mike Trout returns to the field 8-feet tall with 400 pounds of muscle like a Monstar, it could be lean times for baseball’s fandom the next time the players play.

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