MLB and its players aren't stupid enough to have a labor war ... right?

Major League Baseball and its players aren’t this stupid.

The clock is ticking toward a midnight deadline for a new collective-bargaining agreement between the parties, and the threat of a lockout from the owners hangs in the air like a fetid smell, and all anybody outside the walls in which negotiations are taking place can think is: Surely they know better than to throw away the goodwill of a wonderful World Series, the guarantee of a $10 billion cash cow and a potential quarter-century of labor peace over issues so fundamentally inconsequential that this deal should’ve been done a month ago.

Right?

There is a very simple mandate both MLB and the MLB Players Association understand, and while neither is willing to acknowledge it, for fear of showing even a sliver of weakness, it is fundamentally obvious: Do not screw up this good thing, not over whatever chasm remains in their march toward the expiration of the current CBA.

This goes especially for MLB, which has threatened to lock out the players if substantial-enough progress is not reached. The mere idea of a lockout on the eve of the Winter Meetings, the jewel of baseball’s offseason and a vital publicity-making endeavor, is so ham-fisted, such obvious saber-rattling that acknowledging it may be giving it more credence than it’s worth. And yet the fact that it’s even being floated speaks to the negative energy that has pervaded these negotiations.

For months, MLB has been boiling at the union for what the league believed to be slow responses to proposals, according to league sources. The MLBPA’s change in leadership after the death of Michael Weiner to Tony Clark brought about a shift in operating procedure, too, and what the league once considered typical no longer stood.

Certainly part of this is the leadership style of Clark, the first ex-player to head the union after a succession of lawyers. He won the job promising to fight MLB, and infuriating the other side in the months leading up to the most vital days constitutes a change, no doubt, one that may not have flipped the advantage back to the union, which for years had a hand in labor talks, but showed a willingness not to kowtow to what MLB wanted.

The opposition to the international draft furthered that thought, though as MLB in the last 48 hours has backed off its insistence on the draft as a foundational point in these negotiations, multiple players have wondered whether it was always simply a canard in the first place. An international draft itself would be a massive undertaking; the responsibility of dealing with the fallout, of working with governments to implement it, of not destroying the economy that exists, especially in the Dominican Republic, from the peddling of teenaged baseball prospects – that would take an enormous amount of planning, more than MLB ever offered the union. The MLBPA took it seriously enough to bring scores of Latin players in to negotiations; it also recognized MLB had weaponized it and was willing to use it to further talks.

Sources at the labor meetings in Dallas range from “cautiously optimistic” to “pretty certain” a deal gets done, though if one doesn’t, the onus then falls on the owners. The union isn’t striking, not with spring training 2½ months away. The parties have continued the business of the game through periods in the past when the basic agreement lapsed because it’s bad business to fall into a pattern of strife when no reason warrants it. MLB must heed its past.

Yes, labor deals are giant, breathing entities, ever evolving and constituting a staggering breadth of issues, from revenue sharing to taxation to amateur spending to meal money. This one is tame compared to the old wars. MLB does not want to institute a salary cap. It does not want to fold teams. It is not claiming poverty. The fundamentals of a stable game are in place. Which is what makes the posturing so unnerving and unnecessary.

There is a way to get rid of the qualifying offer, a pox on players (and, in some cases, teams), and get commensurate return, whether it’s stricter rules internationally or a lower luxury-tax ceiling. There is a revenue-sharing distribution model that pacifies the high- and low-rev teams, whose beefs with one another can be every bit as contentious as that between the league and the union.

For 21 years, ever since it lost a World Series to labor conflict, the parties have ridden the gravy train of their business acumen to unconceivable riches, well beyond the wildest internal projections. And along the way, neither has forgotten the damage labor discord caused the game. Two decades is a long time. Just not long enough for baseball to act like it’s in a position to rediscover just how strong-willed its fan base really is.

A lockout behooves no one. It would be an act of exceedingly poor faith. Inside the sport, both sides acknowledge the intrigue of the offseason, even one with as mediocre a free agent class as 2016-17’s, may constitute the highlight of the year. Spring training is fun, and 162 games are great, and the World Series is the crown jewel, but if one thing that unites all baseball fans, it’s the offseason.

To shut that down, and for seemingly nothing, is not the solution. They’ll find one today, or tomorrow, or over the next few days or weeks or even months. And when they do, there won’t be some mad scramble to sign and trade and do everything they could’ve done already. They’ll be ready to hear the same two words everyone on both sides wants, two words even sweeter than labor peace: Play ball.