The State of the Anti-Union Address

If you’ve been following along closely since Major League Baseball and their franchise owners locked out players over three months ago, you are keenly aware of the great rift valley located between the asks of the players and the desires of the teams.

The players recognize that as revenues have skyrocketed, their slice of the pie has shrunk in percentage. The owners recognize they can take 14 hour naps daily and not give two passed-gasses about winning and still print money. There is a whole lot to unpack and Marie Kondo before anything close to actual bargaining can even begin.

Despite the lengthy delay in any sort of action since owners locked the players out, we still have heard precious little from MLB lead singer Rob Manfred, who is currently commissioner of a league that’s doing its best to cease existing. With the dawn of spring training supposed to be just a week away and that, along with anything else, now almost assuredly postponed, it appears as if he will finally do some sort of window-dressing for the media on Thursday.

MLB on Fox relayed the news yesterday evening.

So we’ve got that going for us.

Expect to hear him blame the players for being locked out still despite, y’know, it being a lockout and not a strike. Expect him to damn them for turning down a bad-faith attempt at mediation. Expect this to be the first true salvo from MLB owners in the War for Public Opinion that the players are keeping baseball off your televisions!!

If you’ve truly got the urge to watch it, I implore you to do so with multiple grains of salt. Heck, get some popcorn salt, some rock salt, some sea salt, even some basalt to take it in with. If he answers questions at all, which is a big if, you’re going to get spin so well crafted it’ll rival Driveline.

The only true perk I expect to come from this is that it just might prompt a public rebuttal from the MLBPA, and frankly I’d adore the chance to see Max Scherzer rip Manfred in a fiery media session, line item by line item.

Stay tuned for time and place, folks.