ROB MANFRED'S GROWING LIST OF FAILURES CONTINUE

I'm sick and tired of hearing about the MLB lockout. I'm tired of writing about it. I'm tired of thinking about it. But when in the middle of a lockout, it can't be avoided when you write a blog.

So I had a terrible lapse of judgement on Thursday and Rob Manfred gave me false hope. I wanted to believe what he was selling. We all do, but I really hoped for that miracle. He made a nice pitch that you can read HERE but here's what gave me some hope:

"That's the art of this process. Somebody makes a move. And that's why we'll make additional moves on Saturday that creates flexibility on the other side and what seemed like a big gap on this topic or that topic isn't such a big gap anymore."

He made it sound like owners were ready to play ball and the gap could be bridged....but that didn't happen at all. In fact, negotiations lasted approximately an hour and then Jon Heyman tweeted this:

That's frustrating for me to read. There hasn't been nearly enough time at the negotiating table to get this deal done. Saturday's meeting between MLB and MLBPA was the first in 11 days. Both sides didn't even meet to START negotiating until 43 days after the lockout started. Neither side knows the art of negotiation at all and no sense of urgency.

So Sorry, Manfred's follow up comment of  "I believe we will have an agreement in time to play our regular schedule" is nothing but a bunch of crap. We are in the middle of February so to think that both sides are going to light a fire under their asses and agree to a deal by March 31st feels like a wild fantasy.

If and when March 31st rolls around and the season hasn't started we should all remind Manfred of this. He's a lying clown and he's killing this sport. #FireManfred!

--Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa

BYB Senior Managing Editor

Twitter: @nyprincessj