Phillies: Larry Bowa says baseball needs to win fans back
By Matt Rappa
The Phillies’ Larry Bowa discusses current events in baseball
Larry Bowa is a longtime member of the Philadelphia Phillies organization as a player, coach, manager, and now senior advisor to the general manager.
Fifty years ago, Bowa made his major league debut in red pinstripes; 40 years ago, he helped the Phillies to their first-ever World Series championship. And, next season will mark 20 years since he began managing the team.
Bowa’s resume is long, but he hopes when negotiations resume between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), following the post-2021 season expiration of the collective bargaining agreement, are not anything like we just went through.
“I’ve been in these before,” Bowa said in a recent interview with sports talk radio host TC Martin. “I’ve been in about four or five of those as a player, and they were tough to deal with at the time. I guarantee both sides wanted to get on the field, but those are tough negotiations and I really think the one coming up in 2021 is going to be tougher than this one.”
"“I think the one word, if you want to use it, is trust. I don’t think either side trusts each other. If you don’t have that trust to be able to sit down and negotiate in good faith, you’re going to have issues.”"
The Sacramento, California, native says that the everyday fan relates to what is going on in the world. Currently, of course, it is the pandemic, and Bowa thinks the seemingly never-ending talks between MLB and the MLBPA made the owners and players look “greedy.”
“With this owners-players dispute, I think we lost a lot of fans and we got to try to win them back somehow,” Bowa says. “Both sides have to realize that the fanbase right now is not really interested in baseball. We have to get them back to the drawing board and get them interested in baseball once again.”
He continues: “It looked bad for both sides because of the money people make at professional levels. I think the thing that made it really uncomfortable was the fact that we have the coronavirus. People are out of work and a lot of people couldn’t even put food on the table.”