Nine days into a marathon negotiating session that left all involved weary and worn, Major League Baseball and the MLBPA entered the bargaining room early Tuesday morning with a chance to save Opening Day. MLB was pushing the union to finalize a middle-of-the-night accord on a new collective bargaining agreement. Behind the scenes, team officials were funneling optimistic whispers to anyone who would relay them to the public. And yet on the other side of the table was a union that wasn’t ever going to accept an offer it regarded as substandard.
“They need to stop treating us like we’re idiots,” one veteran player told ESPN.
Communication — the real, substantive sort — involves so much more than talking, presenting, proposing. Listening is a…
