At last, it is safe to say the only three words fans have cared about for months: Baseball is back. Major League Baseball and its players’ union reached an agreement Thursday on a collective bargaining agreement after 99 locked-out days of tedious rhetoric and posturing. Put ’em in, coach. They’re ready to play.
Baseball lovers always find comfort in the rhythms of the game — now more than ever, perhaps, amid a gloomy two-year drumbeat of anxiety and upheaval, near and far. The delayed start to spring training, and the specter of a shortened or canceled season, was almost too much to bear, another disquieting sign of these troubled times.