So Are The Phillies Going To Be Playing at All in 2022?

It’s the middle of Winter and the Phillies are the furthest thing from our minds. We’re thinking the Sixers getting James Freakin’ Harden, the Super Bowl, what the Eagles should do in the offseason, and occasionally we think about how bad the Flyers are. And after another massively disappointing Phillies season last year, most of us would prefer to forget about baseball for awhile.

But the problem is is that once the NFL season ends and we have more time to focus on baseball, we might actually have to wait longer for the start of baseball season. For weeks now the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League Baseball having been trying to negotiate a new labor deal and it hasn’t been great.

 

Only those old enough to remember the 1994 MLB season knows what its like to live through a labor strike. The World Series being cancelled that year was a huge blow to Major League Baseball that year and the sport didn’t recover until Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s 1998 Home Run race.

Nowadays baseball is fighting an uphill battle to stay relevant in the national spotlight. The NFL and NBA are far ahead of the MLB in popularity. The things that made the game interesting in the 20th century is losing the average fan in the 21st century. And it doesn’t help that the younger fans who are more forgiving and understanding of steroid users not see important players from that era inducted into the Hall of Fame (same goes to the Veterans Committee who have yet to induct Dick Allen into the Hall of Fame.) So the last thing the league needs is a delay of the 2022 regular season during a time when football is finally out of the way.

So for now, we have sit back and wait to see if both sides can work things out in time.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, the latest sports commissioner whose been overwhelmed by waves of scandals and unpopularity, has confirmed that the Universal DH is finally going to adopted in the game along with the removal of draft pick compensations. Manfred is also optimistic about the regular season starting on time despite signs saying that it won’t.

As fun as it will be to see the Phillies play with a Designated Hitter and allow some of their bad fielders to finally get off the field while remaining in the lineup, it’s pointless if we have to wait all Spring to see baseball.

If the Phillies don’t play this Spring that at least we’ll have the brand new Sixers with James Harden in the lineup to distract us. But even as incredibly disappointing the baseball team has been in a decade, it’s still nice when Citizens Bank Park is open to the public for 81 home games. Now we don’t know how many home games the Phillies are going to play and we won’t know if they’ll finally be good or not this year. Especially since this is Bryce Harper’s follow-up to an MVP season and a piece of his prime is probably going to go to waste.

So while we pay attention to the bigger sports stories, lets keep an eye on this ongoing labor dispute between MLB and the MLBPA. We may not miss baseball now, but when we don’t have it this Spring we are going to miss it a lot.

By Mike McCarrick | February 11, 2022