The current Major League Baseball lockout of players is a complicated situation, without an easy villain to blame. But that did not stop NBC Sports Chicago from tweeting a story with no particular byline Thursday (a screengrab is seen above) that set all the fault on the players. They later deleted the initial tweet and article of “Reports: MLB Proposes Return to Work, MLBPA Balks” (as seen above, and despite its initial deletion, it still lives on in other venues, including the preceding NBC Chicago link). But that deletion only came after a lot of criticism, including from ESPN’s Jeff Passan:
I most certainly did not report that. So please fix your headline, delete your tweet or take me entirely out of this poor excuse for whatever you're trying to do.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 13, 2022
Here’s some of the other criticism there:
Did the owners write this. https://t.co/uNmD9FuoJf
— Heather Linington-Noble (@AlainnFocail) January 13, 2022
The "By _____" is just perfect. Nice of NBC Sports Chicago to let Major League Baseball write for their website. https://t.co/VpSniGAjJz
— Andrew Bucholtz (@AndrewBucholtz) January 13, 2022
NBC Sports Chicago just got flatlined by Passan. pic.twitter.com/eKPj8ozrJZ
— Baseball GIFs (@gifs_baseball) January 13, 2022
The actual article here had nothing notable, just a few tweets on how far apart MLB remains from the MLBPA. But the headline certainly drew a lot of attention. And it led to a widespread roasting of NBC Sports Chicago for a very obvious decision to position themselves with MLB owners.
