A Valentine's Day Filled With Baseball Heartbreak

Today, one of our authors draws stark comparisons between our beloved sport and a shallow rom-com and ponders whether MLB might ever love us back.

Feb 14, 2022

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Pregame Pepper - Love Is In The Air

Seeing as today is Valentine’s Day, we hope you enjoy this video montage of MLB romantic antics.

Leading Off

Baseball’s Just Not That Into You

By Sean Millerick

There’s nothing worse than a sense of unrequited love on Valentine’s Day, right?

Unfortunately, many baseball fans out there probably are feeling just that way this morning. Halfway into February, all thought is on an MLB lockout entering its eleventh week, rather than those pitchers and catchers that should be reporting right about now. The big news from the weekend? No news, save for the universal DH officially becoming the law of the land. Should those NL pitchers ever be allowed to report, guess they won’t need to pack a bat. Both sides are still a ways apart, with realistically less than two weeks left to make a deal before regular-season games are lost.

Not exactly the kind of stuff that makes the heart swoon, is it? I mean, let’s face it. MLB is hardly looking like the prize catch out of a romantic comedy these days. On that subject, what would it even be called, if this Greek tragedy of a labor war was actually just the latest seasonal rom-com?

(Any) Days of Summer? 50 Court Dates? How To Lose A Season In 10 Days? How about Crazy, Rich Owners? Perhaps The Checkbook?

No, unfortunately, I think the winner might have to be Baseball’s Just Not That Into You.

For it is hard to shake the sense that MLB isn’t overly interested in investing the same amount into this relationship that we are. That much has been clear since the fight over returning in 2020, and was made clearer still by this lockout. But then came this weekend’s news, where an MLB attorney went on record Friday pronouncing that minor league players don’t deserve a salary during spring training.

MLB owners and leadership should consider putting out a Masterclass in tone-deafness.

While not part of the current labor war as minor leaguers aren’t members of MLBPA, minor league pay is perhaps the one issue that fans universally agree upon. They are criminally underpaid. Groups such as Advocates for Minor Leaguers have taken the internet by storm to lay bare the shocking conditions many of them have had to endure over the course of a journey to the majors that the majority don’t complete. Flip a coin between this and actual rule changes (something else not on the table in these talks) for what fans most want to see addressed.

MLB is happy to talk, sure. But are they really listening?

Seriously, it is those kinds of slip-ups that are going to make it increasingly easy for more and more fans to start following minor league and NCAA baseball completely. That, or just getting much more into basketball and hockey. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred did get one thing right in his Thursday remarks: lost games will be devasting for the sport.

Of course, we all want this relationship to work, no matter what our NBA and NFL fan friends keep telling us. Baseball fires our hearts in a way they couldn’t understand, always leaving us asking the same question Brad Pitt asks in that truly classic romance story, Moneyball: how could you not be romantic about baseball? I’m as frustrated as any fan, but I have also still bought merchandise, planned trips, and written many optimistic articles about how awesome my team will be in 2022. I’m sure many of you have done the same.

Whatever works for us, right? Major League baseball might just not be that into us, smugly confident that we will keep coming back no matter how much our patience is tried. And…baseball is probably right. The game has done us wrong, and when a labor dispute like this one starts to look like it is going to cost us real games…it’s easy to feel jilted, if only for a moment. So, to borrow from the actual romantic classic 10 Things I Hate About You, I leave you with a sonnet penned just for MLB:

I hate that you ignore me,

Just as if you didn’t care.

I hate that there’s no bullpen car,

And that your deals aren’t square.

I hate your big dumb wage disputes,

And how you all sound so unkind.

I hate it so much it makes me sick,

How you mess with service time.

I hate that you won’t see the light,

Or frankly even try.

I hate that you won’t fix the draft,

Or call up kids before July.

I hate the fact you’re not around,

And that you haven’t been since fall

But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you,

Not even close,

Not even a little bit,

Can’t we just play ball?

Sean Millerick is a diehard Miami Marlins fan but still finds cause for hope every Spring Training. He currently writes for CallToThePen. You can find him on Twitter @miasportsminute.