Minor league baseball hasn’t been able to take the field in more than a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
That’s not an encouraging development for a sport that desperately needs to develop new fans at the grassroots level.
In a classic game of hardball, Major League Baseball essentially forced its will on the game’s crucial developmental levels, eliminating highly sought affiliations with 43 franchises — about a quarter of its sprawling minor league system.
D-Day came Wednesday, with MLB teams extending invitations to a lucky group of 120 teams — four for each of the 30 big league franchises — while barely seeming to care about teams that were left in the dust.