Collectively speaking, baseball rules.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS biz

BEING A SPORTS FAN DEMANDS PATIENCE. Not just With your team's performance in down years that means you. Rockies guy). but with the pull-your-hair-out frustration surrounding labor negotiations that often result in truncated or abandoned seasons.

Such is the case now ill least of this writing with the National Hockey League, which promised its only six Years ago, at the conclusion of a player lockout, that its new collective bargaining agreement would bring about a new "partnership" will] players. Instead, with (he expiration of that "A in September, hockey had Fallen into tatters again, testing the allegiance or long-time fans. For loyalists, the latest jilt is every hit as heart-wrenching as a relationship gone sour, and just as likely to leave a permanent scar.

Hockey's sad state closely trailed the National Football League, which appeared to be on the brink of a lost season in 2011, and coincided for a while with an absurd falling-out between the NFL and the union representing its referees. And of course, in the most recent NBA season 12 games were erased from the schedule of the Nuggets and other teams as the league and its players failed to reach a deal before the opening tipoff.

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The pattern is painfully common: owners and unions whose ace-in-the-hole is the ability to punish tans who have enormous emotional investment not only in their teams, but in the essential rhythmic, movement of life across calendars fixed to sports seasons.

There is one notable exception among the Big Four U.S. professional sports leagues. Major League Baseball has managed to avoid serious carnage tied to labor negotiations For 16 years running now. And with the current CBA locked in for another four years, it appears MLB will make it through 20 straight seasons wit limn the distraction and pain Of a divisive labor dispute. The Colorado Rockies may test your patience front time to Lime, but at least they've had a lead-off guy at bat on opening day every year since they joined the league.

I was reminded of this fact last month by an expert in baseball's labor history, William Gould. The Stanford law professor emeritus was chairman or...