Major League Baseball is back

There was a time quite recently when it appeared that Major League Baseball, led by Fred Manrob and his band of oligarchical yayhoos, was headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. 40 years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

As artificial deadlines were arbitrarily set, and missed, it seemed as if the MLB lockout was doomed to cost us week upon week of the regular season. Manrob, in fact, began to ‘cancel’ games, lopping off the first two weeks of the season with the subplot caveat that they might be able to get those games in if the players would simply relent.

Then came Thursday, March 10th.

Despite the negotiations taking numerous sharp turns, the two sides came to an agreement on a new labor deal, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan relayed despite his Twitter account having been hilariously hacked at almost the worst possible time.

Opening Day will be April 7th, there will be an abbreviated spring training with Cactus and Grapefruit League play beginning on March 17-18th, and doubleheaders will be put in place to help make up for the games that got squeezed back from the original Opening Day by the delays in negotiations.

There will be a Designated Hitter in the National League. There will be a raise on the league minimum of a significant amount. The Cincinnati Reds will still never spend anywhere close to the amount of money that would trigger the new Luxury Tax threshold. There will be much rejoicing, with Mark Feinsand of MLB.com providing more deets on the deets:

Major League Baseball, despite all its foibles, is back.