What He Does

For anyone he need of a demonstration, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred yesterday demonstrated that special talent of his to lie while standing up or writing a letter. Either and both showed Manfred for the lying liar that he is. I bet the owners love him for it. Manfred took to the cameras to announce that negotiations to bring about a new collective bargaining agreement had ended. “I had hoped against hope that I would not have to have this particular press conference in which I am going to cancel some regular season games,” said the man caught by an AP photographer earlier in the day practicing his golf swing. The duffer lied because he and the owners think they can bring the players to their knees because of the pay lost to cancelled games. Manfred also said that his side “exhausted every possibility” to make an agreement, which is a lie so big as to verge on hilarious, if only it weren’t so outrageously sad. An offer that includes no movement on the luxury-tax threshold for three out of five years is the result of delusion, not exhaustion. I tried watching this performance only to get sick of the lies coming out of Manfred’s mouth; for me, at least, it’s easier to read a series of untruths. Like the line about how the duffer and company “listened to our fans.” Not anyone like me, they didn’t. I don’t care about expanded playoffs; teams hovering around .500 don’t deserve to go, and owners of such teams don’t deserve the extra revenue. And don’t tell me what “the calendar dictates.” It doesn’t dictate anything, Rob, you do. Baseball played a full 162-game schedule in 1990 with opening day in the second week of April. And don’t insult me by bringing up the 1994 strike again. That was then, and this is now. If you want to blame the players for something that happened twenty-seven years ago, then accept the blame for putting this season in doubt. Some people want to turn lead into gold; baseball owners just want a salary cap. That’s what this lockout is about. If the owners get one, the Ricketts family comes out way ahead because they have the most SoFi-Stadium like operation in baseball. I imagine every owner short of Jerry Reinsdorf will want to copy that idea of ever-bigger revenue streams based on controlled costs. All of which leads me to root for the multimillionaires instead. In the meantime, local media is turning its attention to the NFL Combine later this week. Wait to go, duffer.