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“Padres Baseball—Experiment Coming”

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Baseball is ready to go forward starting the weekend of July 4th, they hope.

Padres baseball is hopeful of going forward too, but with lots of unanswered questions.

We know a couple of things for certain.  MLB wants to open spring training camps in June, in most hometown stadiums.

But for some teams, they may have to go back to their spring training camps to get players into camp, because cities are still ‘hot spots’, notably the Yankees-Mets-Orioles-Cubs-White Sox.

We know baseball wants an 82-game schedule, and they have cancelled the All Star Game and the bye week around it.  We also know the formula is to have NL-West teams play their owner division opponents, but also teams in the AL-West from a less travel standpoint.

But because of those city ‘hot spots’, those same teams in the Northeast may have to open with regular season games in Florida and Arizona.

We know baseball wants to break the 47-year tradition of the Designated hitter rule, putting the DH in both lineups for American and National League games.

We know they are willing to expand rosters to 30-players a game and allow a 20-man taxi squad to be part of the team.

Owners want a change too in salaries for this one season, an equal  revenue split, for not just regular season games but the expanded playoff games too.  Give back during the season, reap the benefits of money in the postseason.

We have questions everywhere after that.

The Padres begin furloughs of a large segment of their work staff this coming Sunday.  Credit given to owner Ron Fowler who met 5-payrolls in the two months, since spring training ended.

The 230-fulltime employees at Petco Park, who work on the business side, the stadium side, and baseball side, will given health care during the baseball shutdown, but either no salary, or salary cuts if they remain on the job.

The Padres have a second issue, not yet spoken publicly.  If California is not reopened by Governor Gavin Newsome, would the Padres-Dodgers-Angels-Giants-A’s be forced to open the regular season in the torrid heat of their spring training sites?  It could very well happen.

The medical protocols will be huge, but baseball still has at least a month to configure how to test all baseball staff members, and the scheduling of testing, once parks are opened for camp.

And because everything in baseball is also about money, comes an equally hard part, that the owners want the players to go to a 50-50 revenue share for this season because of the loss of large amounts of money due to the ban of fans in the stands.

The Union, in typical fashion, says that becomes a ‘salary cap’ and they won’t talk about that.

Tony Clark’s Union stance is despicable.

In this era, where baseball salaries average 4M per player this coming season, in a society that has 33M unemployed at this hour, he is trying to have his players get  full pay for the 82-games they will play, even if the Ron Fowler’s of the world are hemmoraghing money daily, and facing another financial loss with no fans in the stands.

Time for the union to do something for the game, rather than themselves.

Clark is the one who months ago used the phrase ‘laboratory season’ when baseball shutdown.  Now he has the chance to do something, to give back to a grieving country.  Give them the games back and have the players play for less for the 3-months of the regular season.

Next year returns to next year and all the rules and regs of a 162-game season, with an expanded playoffs too.  More money in the pot-of-gold that exists.

We need good health in our country.  We need baseball to help heal what we are dealing with emotionally.  The rich don’t need to get richer at this time in our society.

The players needs to give something back, not just to the owners, but also to the fans. Take a 3-month pay-cut and help us heal.

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