The count is 3 and 2 and major and minor league baseball is losing league games in the regular 2022 league season.

Hanna Keyser, a writer and reporter who has covered sports and food for Major League Baseball, Yahoo and on Twitter announced on March 9 that “Major League Baseball (MLB) announced the cancellation of another two series of regular season games after the lockout barreled through the owners’ third designated deadline.”

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has announced that opening day for the season “would be postponed until at least April 14.”

Baseball fans are expressing fears that there may be no major or minor baseball played this year. We really don’t see that happening…too much money involved.

Keyser in her Yahoo sports article noted, “the initial spate of canceled games came on the heels of nine days of near constant bargaining but that hint of progress proved fruitless the following day when the league made its best offer and then quickly moved to announce the cancellation of games once the union rejected it.”

The league and union officials met in New York last week and seemed to be moving toward bridging the significant monetary gaps that remained.

The proposed international draft did not gain support and Keyser reported, “the two sides had been further apart and seemingly most entrenched on the competitive balance tax and a newly created bonus system for early-career players.”

On the table at the present time is that the two sides will also need to bridge divides on the amount of money in the bonus pool for productive pre-arbitration players and the minimum salary.

Keyser’s article said that, “a priority for the union in these negotiations has been getting younger players paid more and this can be done by raising the minimum salary and via the creation of a bonus pool for remaining players who are not yet arbitration eligible.”

This is now the third deadline MLB set and then missed to preserve a full season.

The two sides will need to bridge divides…with all that is going on in our world today…America still needs its professional baseball.

We predict that the two sides will jointly agree to the offers and by the time this column goes to print spring training will be underway.