The deep chasm that exists between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA threatens to wipe out the 2020 season. The clock is ticking. Unless the sides arrive at some common ground, and soon, there will be no baseball until 2021.
Ron Roenicke can hear that clock ticking, too, as much as he might choose to ignore it.
The Red Sox manager has a contract in place only through the end of this season. In actuality, it's the original contract he signed when he joined former manager Alex Cora's coaching staff for the 2017 season, one presumably sweetened when he was named interim manager, then manager, earlier this spring.
He was less than two weeks from managing his first game when the sport got put on pause in mid-March.
"I was so looking forward to the start of the season (in March),'' said Roenicke. "As crazy as things were (the Mookie Betts trade, the MLB investigation, the Chris Sale injury) and all the things that were happening to us, I was really looking forward to managing and enjoying it. I was enjoying the whole thing."
If a 2020 season is salvaged at all, Roenicke will have a shortened season -- as few as 82 games -- to prove his worth. And he'll do so having had his best player traded away while his best pitcher recovers from Tommy John surgery.
Meanwhile, if a 2020 season is wiped out altogether, Roenicke won't have any chance at all. He'll turn 64 in August in a job where, increasingly, teams are seeking younger candidates, the better to communicate with today's player. And there will be some high-profile managers, currently out of work, available on the open market -- including, but not limited to, Cora himself.
After being fired in the first month of the 2015 season by the Milwaukee Brewers, Roenicke waited another five seasons to get his second chance in the dugout. Now, that chance could be brief -- if it takes place at all.
"It goes through my head, but it's not something I dwell on too much,'' said Roenicke. "Maybe that's because I've done this for so long. I would say I if was 40 years old and I was in this position, I would definitely feel that way. But I don't so much. I asked Chaim (Bloom, chief baseball officer), 'Hey, how're you enjoying your first year?' He's had it way rougher than me because I've been in this a long time.
"The maturity, I guess, helps. I'm not in control of anything; we aren't in baseball and we aren't in life. I think as long as I just continue to do things the right way and the best way that I can, things are going to go how they go. I'm very confident in what I do in baseball. I think all the things that I've been through leading up to this point allows me to do this job in a way that will allow other people to see that I'm capable.
"Whatever happens at the end of the year, that's the way it goes.''
Roenicke knows full well that there has been rampant speculation about the Red Sox bringing back Cora in 2021, once his suspension for his involvement in the 2017 Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal is complete.
"You should know that I have a lot of respect for Alex,'' said Roenicke. "Hey, I realize what went on before shouldn't have gone on and Alex knows that. But he's a good person. He is. And he really cares about his players, he cares about his coaches. He cares about people. So that makes me feel a little bit different. I like him a lot and I'm hoping that he manages again, whether it's in Boston or whether it's somewhere else. I'm hoping he gets that chance again.
"I don't want to get into saying he should or shouldn't because those things are up to people and how they feel about things that went down in Houston. But I know, because I sat with this guy for two years, and I listened to him, and I know how he feels about the people that he's in charge of. It really is impressive.
"This is a guy I would really like to see manage again. And if it's in Boston, it's in Boston. I don't know. I'm just going to the best I can at this job while I have it. And then what happens, happens. I'm not going to be mad about whatever goes on.''
____________________________