The Major League Baseball Players' Association announced a strike date of August 30th this morning. As baseball fans, you should relax and avoid coming in contact with any mass media discussing the situation. For those of you unable to resist the urge to turn on ESPN or flip to your paper's sports' section, I'll warn you now that you will likely find at least four references a day to the fact Alex Rodriguez will lose $114,754.10 every day of a strike, and that's only the beginning. You're also likely to encounter dire predictions about the state of the game, the perfect record of work stoppages and strikes after strike dates were set, not to mention endless quotes from fans who will be "furious" if there's a work stoppage.

To those not trying to create mass hysteria, this strike date really isn't a surprise and doesn't necessarily forecast doom for the sport. Baseball has been working without a labor contract for ten months. Major League Baseball's owners look at the other major sports and covet the salary and payroll restrictions in place. As such, when they make proposals that would give them less control than basketball or football, they think the players should accept them without much of a fight. The MLBPA is one of the most powerful unions in the world and understandably has little interest in relinquishing their rights to work in a relatively free market.

If you're inclined to believe that players should accept whatever sums they're offered for the privilege of playing a game for a living, consider for a moment if U.S. citizens were asked to acquiesce to random removals of their civil liberties in order to make it easier for the government to function. We'd still have so much more than most other countries, so why should we care?

Labor negotiations are a complicated process and setting a strike date is merely a part of that process. The union hopes setting a deadline will expedite some of the back-and-forth so that an agreement can be reached in a timely manner. Without a strike date hovering on the horizon, the owners are likely to maintain overly high expectations indefinitely. During the off-season, the players lose the leverage of a strike and management will likely continue waiting for the union to concede, probably even attempting a lockout or implementation. An agreement likely would not be reached before the start of the season and then there would be an extended work stoppage while the players waited out the owners, and the union is much better prepared for such a standoff than management.

By setting a strike date for August 30th, the Friday before Labor Day, the union first threatens one of the owners' highest grossing weekends. Secondly, in the case of a stoppage of more than a few days, they threaten the playoffs, which would be quite costly to the owners. The idea behind setting the date is to have negotiations successfully concluded before any of that happens.

Ideally, owners will discontinue $2M increases in the number for the base payroll on which teams pay no competitive balance tax and put their best offer on the table, allowing the union to determine whether such a tax would cause teams to substantially curtail spending. Although the gap that stands between MLB and the MLBPA on the competitive balance tax is quite large at this time, the two sides have made substantial progress over the past week in other areas.

I've gained optimism in the last month that I didn't have when the season started. At that point, I felt a work stoppage was inevitable. Now while we'll likely approach the brink and may lose a couple days of the season, I don't believe the playoffs will be compromised.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the situation, I urge you to continue to support the game of baseball. Baseball exists in a capitalist society, and its fans should understand and respect the economics of the professional game.