The Major League Baseball (MLB) community is undergoing turmoil after the cancellation of the first two series of the 2022 season due to a heated lockout between owners and players.
The lockout proves to especially be a challenge to the Atlanta Braves, who are currently unable to negotiate a contract with seasoned first baseman, Freddie Freeman, due to the lockout four months after winning the World Series.
Blake Lowe, a sophomore Middle Grades Education major, has been familiar with baseball his entire life. His Great Uncle was Gordie Richardson, an MLB pitcher who won the 1964 World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals. Lowe is a dedicated Atlanta Braves fan, but has showed much displeasure towards the team ownership for how they handled resigning Freddie Freeman.
“Personally, I think the whole Freddie [Freeman] situation is a joke. [The Braves owners] had time before the lockout to give him money, and they didn’t meet his needs,” Lowe says, “I just feel like they were not thinking clearly, they were not valuing his ability like they should, and in the end, I think Freddie will move on.”
Lowe also blames the lockout on the owners for the cancellation of opening day, but he does believe there are some factors behind the closed doors which prevent him from making a full judgement against the owners, “There has got to be underlying factors that make [the cancellation] a plausible decision,” Lowe says.
While many baseball fans have negative thoughts regarding the lockout, there are other members of the community who find a positive way to bide time until the first pitch of the season is thrown.
One user on Reddit, whose username is u/DidItForTheStory, draws simple and comedic sketches of Mike Trout, the center fielder for the Los Angeles Angels, for each day the lockout is active. The drawings have accumulated over 100,000 upvotes and have an overwhelmingly positive reception on the baseball subreddit.
“It feels crazy that this whole thing has blown up in the way it has,” says the Redditor, “I think knowing that the drawings are helping other people get through the lockout not only motivates me to keep going, but helps me pass the time during the lockout as well.”
u/DidItForTheStory claims to have not drawn since elementary school, but has since drawn for 94 days and counting, “I don’t think I’ll run out of ideas, there are a ton of directions I can go with this,” Says the artist, who has drawn Mike Trout using many cultural references such as Star Wars, Lego, South Park and SpongeBob among many others.
