Wooing John Q.

Do owners and players really care what fans want?

ATLANTA -- In the battle for public opinion in baseball's latest labor tiff, no one wins. The owners look like liars. The players look greedy. Bud Selig and Don Fehr look like dueling devils, with lawyers.

The funniest part about the fight for public opinion, though -- funny in a sad, Emmett Kelly kind of way -- is that public opinion really doesn't matter. Not a bit.

The owners' mouthpieces crisscross the country spinning their tale, even as the commissioner duct tapes the mouths of everyone else so the company line stays the same. The players' union plays the "We're just working guys" card until it's dog-eared and worn. Everybody woos the fans. Everybody wants them on their side.

But when you get right down to it, to quote Bill Murray in Meatballs, "It just doesn't matter." What the fans want, what the fans have to say, what they think about this whole, stupid mess doesn't matter at all because the owners and the players and all those damn lawyers are going to do what they want to do anyway. They're going to get theirs.

"The bottom line," says Gary Sheffield, the Braves' slugger, "is why should you be trying to get anybody on your side if you're doing the right thing in the first place?"

Sheffield was talking, of course, about the owners' position. But the owners could just as easily throw it back on the players, who claim to care about the fans but aren't doing a thing about it. Either.

Really, if public opinion played any part in this at all, don't you think this would be a lot less bleak than it is? If the owners and players were listening, and cared about what they heard, everything would be a lot more optimistic around baseball.

You want some public opinion? Here:

Enough. Settle it. If you strike, we're not coming back.

"The players act like the game belongs to them only. Owners too! But … the game belongs to America, to me, to my late father, to all of us," writes Tinsley Stewart M.D., of Louisville, Ky., and a hundred more like him. "I have loved this game for 50 years! I go to 10-20 games a year, not to mention to our local AAA team. But now I am so upset that if this selfish bungling continues, I will never again set foot in a major-league park."

You'd think that might concern owners and players. Eventually, it might. But right now, all we're getting is the "We care about the fans, but the game needs fixing," or "We care about the fans, but they understand."

Yeah. The players care. The owners care. They really do. But …

"It matters," a player who is his team's union representative told me recently, addressing the importance of public opinion. "But we still have to do what we think is right."

At this point, the players and owners are too busy playing tough guys, too busy trying to convince everybody that what they are doing is right to actually do the right thing. Which is to sit down and hammer this thing out. For everybody's sake. Maybe that starts soon. There are at least five talk dates between owners and players scheduled this month.

The pessimistic view is that the players and owners will do whatever they have to do to get what they want. And if that's making the fans a little upset … well, the public takes it in the shorts. Again.

"I’m sorry, but a strike won’t ruin baseball. They’ll strike … and a year later we’ll forget about it. Rotisserie leagues will sprout, we’ll wonder who will beat the Yankees, we’ll wonder why Tampa isn’t up for contraction and so on," writes Curtis Ivanoff of Unalakleet, Alaska. "The players know it, the owners know it … so they’re not worried one bit. Why should they be?"

The players and owners say they care, but they don't listen. They want the fans on their side. But if they're not … well, there's still a labor fight to win.

Public opinion matters, they claim. The fact is, though, at least for right now, it just doesn't matter at all.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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