New CBA underscores the strong state of baseball today

The last time Major League Baseball games were seriously in danger of being canceled due to a work stoppage was on Aug. 30, 2002. After playing the first five months of the season with an expired collective bargaining agreement, the Players' Association voted to go on strike if a new deal couldn't be reached by that day.

The specter of a work stoppage was all too real. The players' strike of 1994 was still fresh in everyone's minds. Owners and players had not agreed to any new CBA without at least a brief work stoppage in 32 years. For many, a strike (even if only for a few days) seemed inevitable.

I was covering the Orioles at the time, my second season as a baseball beat writer, and I had no idea what to expect. The Orioles had played in Texas on Aug. 29, then flew to Anaheim for the scheduled start of their next series on Aug. 30. None of us knew if that series would actually begin as planned.

But then the two sides, led at the time by bitter adversaries Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, struck a last-minute accord. They agreed to a new CBA that included a host of dramatic changes, including (for the first time) revenue sharing between big-market and small-market clubs and drug testing for players.

Baseball, the sport that previously had so much labor discord it actually was willing to cancel the World Series over it, somehow had labor peace at last.

And it still has it to this day, thanks to the new CBA the owners and players verbally agreed to Wednesday night, only a couple of hours before the previous deal was set to expire, with the threat of a lockout looming.

Whether the owners actually would have followed through on their lockout threat, we'll never know. Few believed it would come to that this time. Which actually serves as a strong reminder just how far this sport has come.

Fourteen years ago, we all assumed there would be a work stoppage when negotiations dragged on until deadline day. This time, we all assumed they'd figure it out before the clock struck midnight.

Turns out, the new CBA (which will run through the 2021 season) isn't dramatically altered from the one that has ruled the sport the last five years. There are some nominal changes to the luxury tax thresholds, and the disliked qualifying offer system for free agents has been improved. But rosters will remain 25 through the first five months of the season and 40 in September. There's no universal DH, no changes to the current drug testing program, no international draft.

Why no major alterations? Because baseball as an industry is as strong right now as it has been in a very long time. Revenues are through the roof, approaching $10 billion per year. The average salary continues to rise, now around $5 million. Local television ratings are excellent. Attendance has dipped slightly the last few years, but it's still up 50 percent from where it was in the late '80s and early '90s.

Why would either side want to mess around too much with any of that?

And so baseball's resurgence continues. The sport that tried its best to kill itself from within two decades ago has now ensured at least 26 consecutive seasons with zero work stoppages.

The Winter Meetings will go on as scheduled next week at National Harbor. Not that any of us truly thought they wouldn't.

Unlike that strange August day 14 years ago, we no longer expect the worst from baseball. We expect the best. It's about time.