#Baseball desperately needs its players to get this vote right

There is really only one way for the Major League Baseball Players Association to go from here. They were right to take a few days to vote on the owners’ most recent — and, according to those owners, last — proposal of a 60-game season.

It was a correct reading of the room given the harsh reminders they’ve received the past few days that the coronavirus is still very much a villainous henchman, poised to inflict as much damage as possible with the resumption of normalcy of all kinds.

But it also allows a breather to realize: In their hands is the only true solution to this unwanted and unwieldly labor mess that has dominated the sport the last month.

The best-hoped-for outcome in any labor dispute is for both sides to feel as if they’ve walked away better for the hassle. That’s never been the case in baseball, of course, because from 1972 until 2016 or so, the players won one pyrrhic victory after another, a karmic market correction for the 100 or so years that came before that. And in the last labor battle, the owners emerged a clear winner, which both emboldened them for the future and caused them to engage in more than a couple of touchdown dances.

But now, the players have the power to ensure a proper conclusion. By agreeing to the 60-game schedule, they get what they’ve wanted more than anything else — pro rata salary. But they also get something more valuable — safe residence on the high ground in this skirmish, which is useful now and will be critical as we start the new countdown toward the expiration of the present CBA after the 2021 season.

Accept the 60 games — which will, of course, also allow the owners to claim a victory since that was the number they proposed last week, and one they stuck behind when the players countered with 70 — and they will, of course, allow baseball to return, assuming the virus is willing to comply even a little bit.

There is nothing but upside for the players if they do that: They get to deliver baseball, in whatever form, back to a public that will still have been without live team sports for over 120 days by the time spring training begins in early July. They will get at least a portion of the 2020 season, and if you think there’s no value ask any of the retired members of nearly 20,000 men who have played major league baseball what they’d give to be able to play even one more week of ball.

But they will also be able to acknowledge that there is simply no percentage for anyone in holding out for more games. All sports are engaged in a stick-and-move boxing dance with COVID-19, and it is clear that baseball’s wish to be done with the regular season by Sept. 27 — and the playoffs by late October — in accordance with the warnings of Dr. Anthony J. Fauci is a wise one — and mostly because it will maximize the possibility that as many players as possible might emerge from a season unscathed.

It is a win-win for everyone — or, at the least, as close to a win-win as the sport deserves after burying its head in the mud the last month, and doing everything in its power to anger and alienate as many fans as possible. Look, there’s a lot of bitterness out there, and it is a fury that is both easy to understand and easy to defend.

A lot of people simply love baseball too much to ever part with it, which is baseball’s greatest gift and most fortunate asset. But there will be damage. There was damage in 1972 and even more in 1981, and after 1994-95 there were plenty of fans who went away and stayed away. Baseball might not rule the American landscape as it once did but it is still a powerful vessel for a lot of people.

It may kill the hardest-line players to give even an inch in this fight, and they will surely have long memories 16 months from now, when the next battle lines are drawn. But it will still be a win for them, even if it’ll also be a win for the owners. What ought to make that tolerable is that it would be a win for baseball, too.

But only if the players can understand: This is the only way they can go now. This is the only way they can vote.