PHILADELPHIA – There is a dissonance around baseball right now that’s difficult to reconcile. The product on the field is tremendous, elite talents in every market, freer than ever to flash personality as the game sheds a long-embedded hidebound culture. Case in point, American League starter Dylan Cease and catcher Shea Langeliers wearing mics and talking through pitch calls during a shutout first at the 96th All-Star Game on Tuesday. And business is good, with year-to-year attendance up and ratings strong, the MLB Draft on NBC and Home Run Derby on Netflix demonstrative of MLB’s attempts to reach new audiences in a fragmented media world.

These should be happy times and as the Midsummer Classic nodded to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing during the pre-game festivities, with the starting lineups autographing a mock parchment lineup on their way to the field, and a 4-0 American League win over the National League, they very much are.

At the same time, they very much aren’t with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire Dec. 1, the sides not even on the same spectrum they could be on opposite sides of and the threat of an extended labour disruption as real as it’s been since the summer of 2002, when a late-season strike was averted just before the deadline.

Early proposals featuring maximalist demands from each side are demonstrative of the divide and their fight for control of the narrative spilled into the all-star week festivities during the annual visits by commissioner Rob Manfred........

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