The street lining the San Francisco Giants practice complex was devoid of its usual bustle on a chilly Wednesday morning.
Bartender Sean Ramirez was stacking plates and clearing glasses before the start of lunch service at Los Olivos Mexican Patio, witnessing the effects of the Major League Baseball lockout.
“It’s usually our big time of the year,” said Ramirez, the owner’s son who’s run the bar for 15 years. This is “the square”, this is the meeting place for Giants fans. We are usually filled with fans arriving from Sacramento and San Francisco. »
The sounds of springtime baseball — from the cracking of wooden bats to the music blaring from the loudspeakers and the cries of fans clamoring for autographs — were utterly absent on a day when catchers and pitchers had to report to their teams to begin preparing for the season opener scheduled for March 31.
Major League Baseball crippled
The 77th day of the lockout was marked, making it the second longest labor dispute in professional baseball history. Many minor league players converge on their organization’s respective camps in Arizona or Florida on various dates determined by the teams. However, players whose names appear on their team’s 40-player roster will not jump onto the field until the owners and players agree on a new collective bargaining agreement.
“I’m really disappointed because there’s no one here and we’ll have a very short camp,” said Johnny Rivero, a 59-year-old New York Yankees fan who was hoping to pick up some new autographs for his collection at the center. team practice in Tampa.
“We will see what will happen,” he added.
So far, not much is happening.
A distressing development for supporters is the fact that there has been no real development to resolve the main financial disagreements. Neither side made a public statement this week to admit the camps will not be able to open as planned for the first time since the 1995 season.
In Florida, on Wednesday morning, the monument to late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner faced a nearly empty parking lot in front of the organization’s training complex. The wickets were closed and a cool breeze swept across the empty pitch where the players should have been training.
In Arizona, silence reigned outside Salt River Fields, where the Diamondbacks and Rockies normally train. The cool, humid weather seemed to add to the unease as a security guard patrolled the deserted grounds looking for what to do.
Difficult last seasons
This is the third season in a row that training camps have been disrupted. After an abrupt end to the camps in 2020 with the start of the pandemic, then to the 2021 camps with restrictions on the number of supporters, now a labor dispute comes to the game.
Ramirez says he has no idea when Los Olivos will finally look like they normally do in February and March if there’s no baseball. He just hopes that an agreement will come soon.
“I am an optimist and I believe that we will have an agreement in time for the start of the regular season, commented the commissioner of the league, Rob Manfred, during a press conference last Thursday. Missing games would be disastrous for our industry and we are dedicated to doing everything to get an agreement and prevent that from happening. »
The 2020 regular season only had 60 games played in front of empty bleachers. Last year, only the Texas Rangers played in a stadium at maximum capacity at the start of the season. Other American teams followed suit over the months. Attendance dropped drastically from 68.5 million supporters in 2019 to 45.3 million in 2021.
And now the league has declared a lockout.
Manfred indicated last week that about four weeks of training are needed before starting the schedule. A period to which must be added a few days to allow players to report to their team.
When that will happen, bets are off. In the meantime, fans and workers who rely on baseball, like Ramirez, are stuck in limbo.