The Major League Baseball season began Thursday, a week later than scheduled. But the bitter labor dispute between team owners and the players union, which lasted 99 agonizing days and pushed the season back a week, felt distant.
Whether baseball is better or worse for the changes agreed to in those negotiations will become clear in time. Until then, the game returned to mark the days and weeks and months, relentless in its daily presence again — at least as far as the weather allows, though being subject to the whims of weather is a baseball tradition in itself.
