“Owners lost a boatload of money” – Stephen A. Smith reacts to MLB cancelling the first two series of the season
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Stephen A. Smith
Top American sports radio host and journalist Stephen A. Smith lashed out at the organizers for cancelling the opening day of the 2022 Major League Baseball (MLB) season after sides failed to end the lockout. The MLB commissioner Rob Manfred scrapped the March 31 openers on Tuesday, cutting each club’s schedule from 162 games to likely 156 at most and as many as 91 games were erased.
The commentator on ESPN’s First Take, Smith gave a little backstory of this entire episode and how such a situation arose in the history of baseball. He said:
“I was reading an article on ESPN.com and there’s a particular graph that I really want to highlight here because it crystallizes what the owners do. It says that the league waited three months to counter the union’s first core economic proposal, then another six weeks to circle back after imposing the lockout in December.”
“You got cats like mad dogs and the play is stuck”
The popular TV personality reckoned that the owners are now trying to cover their losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption.
“Now as a person, who has covered collective bargaining negotiations, particularly in the NBA since the mid-90s, that would be me. You know what that strategy seems like an ownership group, obviously the face of it is the commissioner who answers to them. Who wants to create a situation where they ultimately get to impose a final offer that the players must capitulate to and by then, what will happen is the players will say no,” the New York native explained.
He added: “As a result, they strike and you got cats like mad dogs and the play is stuck. And here’s a proof: COVID. These owners lost a boatload of money and they are trying to get it back.”
Also Read | MLB cancels 2022 opening day after sides fail to end lockout – Rob Manfred
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Sachin Arora
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