If you are among the few remaining fans that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred still has, you probably won’t be much longer.

On Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of the MLB General Managers meetings at Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, CA, baseball’s top executive was asked, point-blank, if an owners lockout was imminent, with the current MLB / MLB Players Association Collective Bargaining Agreement set to expire at 8:59 p.m. PST on December 1. And even though understandably vague and evasive in his answer, Manfred caused quite a stir among reporters when he suggested that a lockout now would not be the same as a labor dispute and would actually expedite a new CBA.

No, he actually said this – and he threw baseball fans under the bus when he did so.

“I can’t believe there’s a single fan in the world who doesn’t understand that an offseason lockout that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games,” Manfred said with a perfectly straight face.

Is a lockout not a lockout?

I’m sorry, Rob, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

And then, almost in the same breath, the Commissioner added this:

“I don’t think there’s anybody who understands better than I do that from the perspective of the fans, they don’t want a labor dispute, and that’s why our number one priority is to make a deal.”

Which is it, Rob? Would this be before or after your offseason lockout, which, any way you try to spin it, is “…a labor dispute.”

Although anything is possible and “Hope Springs Eternal,” and all, but the likelihood of MLB and the MLBPA agreeing on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement before 8:59 p.m. PST on December 1 lies somewhere between slim and none. And if Rob Manfred honestly “… can’t believe there’s a single fan in the world who doesn’t understand that an offseason lockout that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games,” then he is a far bigger fool than any of us have given him credit for being.

Get a clue, Rob. Your entire legacy is at stake here.

Play Ball!

Please?

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