With the Dulaney baseball season rolling, along with every other team nationally, you’d think the most professional and talented league in the world would be joining them. Major League Baseball, consisting of the best of the best ball players, postponed opening day. For the past twenty years and counting, the beloved opening day for baseball has been in mid to late March, but this year it’s different, starting as late as mid April. 

There has been a lockout within the politics of the MLB, the first time every happening in the history of the sport. To put it simply, team owners have halted all baseball related activities, limiting players to contract negotiations and working out, in hopes of pressuring the union into facilitating CBA negotiations. The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is essentially an agreement between the major league teams and players. How long did this lockout last? As of mid march, after about 100 days of a continuous lockout, the player union and owners reached an agreement, pushing back opening day to April 7, 2022. 

Yes, that is only about a 2 week postponement, but teams will have to play multiple doubleheaders, while also being unprepared due to a lack of spring training, in order to play a full season come playoff time. 

Why did this lockout originally happen? For starters, owners wanted expanded playoffs, with hopes of making more money through TV revenue. Players, on the other hand, wanted protection to keep them from being held back in the minors. They also wanted free agency to be available to players above thirty who have been playing for up to five years. A lot of the disputing and arguing was circled around a salary cap, which for the MLB, does not exist. 

It’s surprising that while the NFL, NHL and NBA all have salary caps, the MLB does not. A salary cap allows for the richer teams and dynasties to not continue to grow and receive new stars. Franchises like the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants all have substantially more money than smaller franchises like our very own Orioles. Without a salary cap, “large-market teams” will continue to dominate while the smaller market teams will be stuck in this losing streak. That’s the basic concept of salary caps in baseball, and with players and owners having opposing opinions on it, disputes were inevitable. 

It’s exciting to see how players perform once the season gets rolling. From December 2nd to late March, players were unable to do any baseball activities with their team, which makes it interesting to see how much that affects individual performance this season. Usually you’d be shocked to hear about a league-wide lockout, but with everything that has happened in our world recently, it isn’t as shocking as it should be. You should be, however, intrigued to see how this adjusted season turns out.