Baseball: Back in Business

Major league baseball’s 32-day spring training lockout has ended, and America breathes a sigh of relief. The regular season will begin, not on April 2 as we had hoped, but a week later. That may not be great, but at least the opening of spring-training camps today signals the return of the game, and that may be good enough. Spring will be a little late this year--as the song goes--but only a little late. And that’s better than not having it at all.

It may be that the bond of loyalty between baseball fans and their game is so deep that no lockout or strike can disturb the game’s special place in our national life. We’d all like to think that, wouldn’t we? It’s amazing what the crack of the bat can do to heal a few emotional bruises, whether they come from games delayed by lockouts or by rain, or whether they arise from dismay over salaries or unhappy trades. Baseball surely has demonstrated its resilience as a suitor of American sympathies in the past.

But will the game always bounce back? In announcing the new four-year agreement, Commissioner Fay Vincent took pains to acknowledge the alienation that some fans had been feeling, and to affirm his belief that the game would rebound. That hinted at that fundamental question lurking in baseball’s growing companion record book--its labor history. During the lockout, fans across the country became increasingly restive and some even spouted the heresy of boycotting games.

Idle threats? Most likely. But owners and players know that without fans there is no game. So a question lingers at least until we have had our first hot dog and stood to cheer a young season’s first brilliant fielding play. We know that major league baseball has staying power, but the question now before the jury of the game’s following is one of degrees: How much battering from labor strife can baseball sustain and still retain its marvelous hold on the public’s imagination?