Baseball is back.

Attendance is up. Excitement is high. A new generation of fans is falling in love with the game. After years of hand-wringing about baseball's relevance, the sport is thriving -- and we, the fans, are the reason why.

We buy the tickets. We wear the jerseys. We stay up late for west coast games and drag our kids to the ballpark in April cold. We are baseball. And right now, we are watching the people who profit most from our loyalty sleepwalk toward another work stoppage that none of us asked for and none of us deserve.

The current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires December 1, 2026. A lockout is widely expected to follow. We've seen this movie before -- and the fans always pay the price while the lawyers negotiate.

We are asking for one thing: include in the next CBA a binding requirement that any successor agreement be fully negotiated, agreed upon, and ratified by both parties before the start of spring training in the final year of that agreement. Not talks begun. Not proposals exchanged. Not almost there. Done -- with an entire season still to play under the existing deal, and the next one already secured.

This means fans, players, teams, and broadcasters enter every final contract year with certainty. No cliff edges. No leverage games played on our time. No cancelled games, truncated spring trainings, and offseasons held hostage.

To the owners and to the players, hear this clearly: you need each other, yes. But you need us more. Without fans in the seats, in front of the screens, and tuned in around the world, there is no game. There is no revenue. There are no contracts worth fighting over.

So here is our commitment to both sides:

If a work stoppage costs the 2027 season even a single regular season game, we will respond -- and we will respond in the only language that has ever mattered in this negotiation: money.

During any lockout we will not purchase licensed merchandise. Not a jersey, not a cap, not a bobblehead. And that boycott does not end when the lockout does. It continues through the entirety of every team's opening homestand when play resumes.

We will not buy tickets to any team's opening homestand. We will not stream games. We will not watch on television.

Empty seats. Empty ratings. Empty cash registers. All at once. At the very moment both sides want the world to see baseball thriving again.

You can lock us out once. You cannot afford to lose us twice.

Respect the fans. Protect the game. Get it done.

[Sign below to send a message to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLBPA Executive Director Bruce Meyer]