Dear baseball,

I miss you.

I miss the crack of the bat, the home-run-robbing catch, the pressure of a one-run game in the 9th, and the second-guessing of the manager’s decisions.

There’s millions of fans that feel the same way I do, but as time goes by, fewer will care anymore.

We want you baseball. You’re our summer pastime, and it’s difficult to comprehend a summer without you.

In a world that’s been impacted so deeply by the current coronavirus pandemic, we need your game to take us away from the reality of what we’ve all been dealing with. We need an escape for our mental well-being.

The pandemic has hurt your fan base more than you can understand. Your world is based on finances with 10 numeric columns, while average Americans are trying to get by with the help of a $1200 stimulus check. Many have struggled thru the loss of jobs, and there are tens of thousands with jobs that depend on your game being played.

Americans have suffered financially too. We get it, you might have to take losses to try and come back, but we’ve been doing the same for three months now. Many of those that have survived the record unemployment numbers have taken mandatory pay cuts. We continue to work harder for less money…and it makes it very difficult to follow the negotiations of owners with billion-dollar assets and players that even at the minimum make more annually than most CEO’s of mid-sized companies.

I miss baseball.

I miss the focus being on a borderline strike and not a potential labor strike.

I miss the urgency of negotiations. The pace and approach to the current process is like asking your significant other to marry you by sending a greeting card thru the U.S. postal service. This is important. Sit down, at a large table, and work it out.

The window is closing. The chance for baseball to be the focus of the entire sports world is slipping away. The NBA announced their plan and within two days the owners and players have accepted it. Starting July 31st, you risk the possibility that some fans will have a new summer pastime, never to look at baseball the same way again.

Two facts that must be accepted by both sides…owners, you WILL lose a significant amount of money and players, you WILL make significantly less than your annual salary. But the value of baseball to the American sports fan is more important than both of those facts. The future growth of the game can’t afford the lack of interest that is now spreading like that virus.

There can’t be any more drawing lines in the sand. In an email and texting world, this needs to be solved by old-fashioned face-to-face mediation. We need your game.

I really miss you.