The 2022 Major League Baseball season will not start on time, according to commissioner Rob Manfred and that has upset a lot of fans.
On Wednesday morning, fans rush outside of MLB headquarters to protest after Manfred's decision to cancel games after the two sides could not agree to a new CBA. Here is what Rob Manfred said yesterday:
"I had hoped against hope that I would not have to have this particular press conference in which I am going to cancel some regular season games," Manfred said Tuesday afternoon.
“The calendar dictates that we're not going to be able to play the first two series of the regular season and those games are officially canceled,” he said, settingup the first disruption to the MLB regular season from a work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike.
MLB players association executive director Tony Clark later called it “a sad day.”
On 90th day and the ninth straight day of in-person bargaining, the league and union were unable to reach a mutually tolerable collective bargaining agreement. A full package proposal made by MLB before its own self-imposed deadline was rejected by the union, which did not see a point in countering what it was told was a “best and final” offer.
Later, however, in his news conference, Manfred said that the league’s position has “a little wiggle room somewhere.”
MLB initially identified Monday as the deadline to get a deal done that would ensure an on-time start to the season. Opening day had been scheduled for March 31. After a super-condensed ramp up ahead of the 2020 restart resulted in an uptick in injuries, the league reasoned that at least four weeks were needed for spring training, drawing a hard deadline at Monday.
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