Of all the harbingers of spring and the hope eternal implied with it, few seize the imagination more than the term "pitchers and catchers report." Not merely for the notion itself but for what it conveys by extension: the thaw and awakenings and possibilities entwined with the season of rebirth that baseball has come to symbolize in our culture.
Even if baseball has become overshadowed by the NFL and in many ways is past its time as America's pastime, it remains ingrained in our social fabric.
So "pitchers and catchers" and the bursting pop of gloves, followed imminently by full-squad workout, in a certain way still feels like a right of citizenship as much as a rite of the season.
"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game ..." Jacques Barzun, the cultural critic, famously wrote in a 1954 essay.
Even at that height of the game's popularity, of course, some of the romanticizing was overstated. Or at least didn't directly address some of those realities, such as the game then remaining in the embryonic stages of integration and the unchecked power of team owners.
Still, alas, the point about "the realities of the game" reflecting America reverberates this week.
Because major-league pitchers and catchers, who were supposed to report to camps on Tuesday, remain locked out by MLB owners who, at least in the collective sense, are too blindly consumed with their own agenda to embrace the greater good.
In addition to the adversarial posturing that set the tone for this clash with the players, their approach alienates the lifeblood of the game: the people who want to keep loving baseball if baseball would just love it back, the fans they purport to serve ... and disregard at their peril.
Especially with the specter of 1994 still hovering and the quaint, deliberate game grappling for its place in an instant gratification world. Particularly with its galaxy of compelling players it should be eager to showcase.
And all while shrugging off an inherent civic obligation that should only be amplified during the ongoing pandemic.
As he considered the meaning of reporting day a year ago, Royals manager Mike Matheny stressed the significance of evolving with safety measures and otherwise doing everything that could be done to navigate COVID-19 because of how crucial it was to contribute to a higher cause.
"How we can do our part to keep this going, so sports can continue to be that kind of light ..." he said, later adding, "and keep doing our part to help the healing process."
This time around, though, baseball is threatening to add to the anguish. Which perhaps should be no surprise given the contentiousness that stained MLB's return-to-play negotiations in 2020 in ways no other major sports leagues experienced.
Business is business, yes. But this still should come with a solemn responsibility to the community, one that the Royals quite inspiringly tend to fulfill at every turn and that we have no doubt principal owner John Sherman takes seriously.
Trouble is, such goodwill is obscured by the broader stance of ownership. Case in point:
Two days after commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters in Florida that the prospect of missing regular-season games during the lockout would be "a disastrous outcome," two days after saying MLB was going to make "good-faith" proposals to the MLB Players Association in their next meeting, MLB's latest pitch on Saturday entailed the following:
"Major League Baseball asked for the ability to eliminate hundreds of minor league playing jobs in its latest labor offer to the MLB Players Association, sources familiar with the proposal told ESPN," ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote.
Considering MLB whittled away 42 minor-league teams in 2020, and that the draft has been reduced from 40 rounds to 20, this sure seems like a doubling-down on reducing opportunities ... even as the MLBPA's thrust includes a great emphasis on enhancing the stature and benefits of younger players.
To be sure, that's just one example within this galaxy of flux. You can certainly make reasonable arguments that concessions and compromise from both MLB and the MLBPA will be necessary to make a deal.
Both sides have to understand that this is about the soul of baseball.
But stances like the one reported by Passan make it hard to argue that MLB is bargaining in good faith or with growth of the game in mind. And it's had that feel to it all along.
Whatever the strategy has been, MLB set the dynamics in play by imposing the lockout in December immediately after the previous collective-bargaining agreement had expired because taking that action "accelerates the urgency for an agreement," Manfred wrote in a letter to fans on Dec. 2.
That earnest urgency remains to be engaged. And with every passing day into perhaps weeks more, baseball gets closer to the postponement of opening day — when the Royals are supposed to open at Cleveland.
If that happens, "the realities of the game" will look less and less appealing.
Even as they did to Barzun years later.
"It's a matter of contention perpetually, bad behavior by all sorts of people in authority in the game," he said, according to The Associated Press, in 1993.
He added, "Other things are similarly commercialized and out of proportion. But for baseball, which is so intimately connected with the nation's spirit and tradition, it's a disaster."
A year later, baseball indeed suffered disaster in the form of the strike that scuttled the 1994 World Series and wasn't reconciled until 232 days later on April 2, 1995.
Now it's on trajectory toward another disastrous outcome.
All the more intensely because amid everything else we still feel a need for baseball despite all the ways it's kicking us in the teeth.
And matter how much Manfred wants to call this stage "the art of this process," MLB better recognize at some point that it needs all of you as much or more than you need it.
