Is Baseball close to returning?

It's like a tennis match. The owners hit a shot and the players hit it back. Each sides have been rallying for weeks, with no end in sight. Now, there appears to be progress, though we have conflicting stories about whether they are close or not.

On Wednesday morning, Jon Heyman from the MLB Network, reported that MLBA head Tony Clark and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred met in Arizona and had a "productive" face-to-face meeting. This afternoon, Heyman is now saying the owners and players are closer to a deal for the season that would include prorated play and an expanded postseason.

Jeff Passan from ESPN reports that MLB has sent a proposal to the union and this is "seen as significant progress considering where the parties were 48 hours ago" even though a new deal is not done.

Both sides have gone from negative to positive to negative rhetoric the last month or so on whether a season was going to be played. Karl Ravech of ESPN reported last week that Manfred was "100%" sure that there would be an MLB season. He changed his tone on Monday, but here we are to the point that baseball could return at some point. We're just waiting on the details of where the games will be played, how many games and when will it start.

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Ben Hayes

Ben has been a sports writer for over 35 years, dabbling in college and pro basketball, college and pro football, baseball, college lacrosse, minor league baseball and even college gymnastics. He's also been involved in the gaming industry for nearly 30 years and has been looking to beat the books since he was 13! Ben has had great success in handicapping college football, the NFL, college basketball, the NBA and MLB for 27+ years. His Twitter handle is @BenHayesWAW