Tim Benz: Congrats, MLB! You've somehow made me enraged at my own apathy.

I’m angry about my lack of anger at Major League Baseball.

Does that make any sense?

On Monday night, I watched MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on ESPN. He was attempting to tap dance through an explanation over the game’s flailing attempt to reboot from the covid-19 shutdown.

He did so with the elegance of a Clydesdale after a three-martini lunch.

Within a week, Manfred has gone from saying we’d have a season in some capacity to making it sound entirely possible we wouldn’t have baseball at all in 2020.

If you were on Twitter during that interview, what followed was a torrent of disdain from every baseball writer, talk show host and fan across the country. It was almost a competition of outrage to see who could come up with the most angst-addled message that could generate the most like-minded responses.

I couldn’t join in. I just didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t muster the heat.

And I’m someone who is pretty easily triggered, too — as readers of this column and my Twitter feed no doubt have noticed.

But the potential of Major League Baseball not playing in 2020 left me so emotionless that I almost found myself getting mad — over the fact that I wasn’t mad!

And now it turns out I am mad … at myself.

Shouldn’t I care more? Why am I not more upset at this development?

Well, I think I know the answers.

It’s not unprecedented. I’m 45. I’ve seen labor stoppages impact baseball seasons before. Specifically, the one in 1994 that ended that season early. And the one in 1981 that junked-up the playoffs.

The pandemic has me so beaten down as a sports fan, I expect nothing but bad news anyway. I’m essentially Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh when it comes to sports these days.

I’m a lifelong Pirates fan. It’s not as if they have a prayer to compete anyway. I’ve covered the team in some form or fashion since 2001. I know how the pattern goes. Normally by the time the Steelers start training camp, the Buccos become an afterthought anyway. And that’s only about six weeks away.

The owners have been ghastly throughout these negotiations, but I’m not buying the narrative of the multi-millionaire players as abandoned orphan children either. So I can’t really “pick a side” to get behind.

I also hate the fact that every grousing old man on a bar stool in every baseball city in America for 40 years has been proven right.

They yell “There’s just too much money in the game!”

Well, there was always “too much money in the game” for the small market teams to field a competitive roster. But now there is literally so much money in the game that the owners and players can feel free to just punt on a season.

Furthermore, there’s so much money in the game, both sides could still make some — or at least lose a little less — by actually coming to an agreement. Yet ownership and labor are both so comfortable they’d rather not stage a truncated season because it’s “not worth it.”

OK then.

Another reason that I can’t get my dander up about baseball potentially unplugging for 2020 is that I think the sport missed its sweet spot anyway. By the time the league starts its regular season — if it ever does — the NBA and the NHL will be in their revamped playoff brackets. The NFL and college football may start up, too.

Where baseball could’ve come back and been king was in May and June. Bubble ideas or not. That’s when most states still had “stay inside” orders and no other sports were competing for airtime.

Man, it could’ve been 1950 again for this sport. An American sporting landscape in the spring and summer months with nothing else to do but pay attention to baseball.

Well, the game stubbed its toe on that prospect.

I posted a Twitter poll to this effect Tuesday. It appears most of those who responded agree with me. Sports fans appear to be far more apathetic than they are sad or angry when faced with a potential of no MLB games in 2020.

Your simply stated, most clear emotion if Major League Baseball doesn't play this year is...

— Tim Benz (@TimBenzPGH) June 16, 2020

It’s the classic case of baseball needing to realize that it’s better to hurt someone’s feelings than have them feel nothing at all.

And about 75% of people responding can’t seem to gin up any emotion at all.

Put me in that majority, too.

On Monday night, I did try. I saw in advance roughly what Manfred was going to say. I planned my night around the 9 p.m. interview before writing my main column for Tuesday. And once Manfred was done talking, I went on social media and saw the volumes of “one upmanship” expressions of gall and rage.

I just didn’t have it. I turned the key. I hit the gas. And my engine never turned over. I looked at a blank page for 15 minutes and decided not to force anything.

I wrote about a two-year-old Steelers loss to the New Orleans Saints instead. It was essentially a last-minute, nothing story I threw together because I couldn’t fake my way through baseball anger. Originally, it was going to be a notes item, and I fluffed it into a full column.

Sadly, it did great. Most read sports story on the website Wednesday. Third story overall.

Good decision by me. Bad look for MLB.

Because I bet you this column won’t get a third of the reads that one did. That should be alarming for baseball. Because I think it’s representative of the disinterest that permeates “America’s pastime.”

Emphasis on “past.”

Unlike Monday night, this piece flowed really easily. One of the fastest columns I’ve ever written.

I guess it doesn’t take very long to say, “I don’t care that much about baseball.”

It just took me 45 years to realize it.

I liked the previous 44 a lot more.