What the heck is going on? No, I’m not talking about how the Orioles continue to defy the laws of the universe (again), I’m talking about how, on this Labor Day, Major League Baseball remains the most stable place in sports when it comes to the relations between players and management. Yes, baseball, the sport that had one strike force the season to become a split-season and the World Series get cancelled, and which at one point in the early 2000s seemed to be headed towards another strike, is the best example of labor harmony.

Meanwhile, the NBA lost a significant portion of it’s season last year, the NFL narrowly avoided a work stoppage with it’s players and now is using scab referees due to a dispute with the usual refs, and the NHL is headed down the road to another work stoppage, which could very well annihilate another whole season.

Remember when the NHL was a major sport on ESPN and everything, and not just something that was only popular in about 6 American markets and could only be found on NBC properties? That little transition from being part of the Big Four to being on the outside looking in on the Big Three happened when they lost an entire season to the 2004-2005 lockout. Who knows what might happen if they again end up with a lost season? The Europeans could just say “Screw this, I’m going home” and depart to teams in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, never to return. What little interest in hockey that there exists in the the United States outside of the Northeast and Upper Midwest will disintegrate even more than before. But, by all accounts, the NHL and the NHLPA seem destined to run straight into the abyss again.

So why is baseball avoiding those problems? Partially it’s because MLB is making so much money that it doesn’t really matter, and the revenue sharing has allowed even the worst teams to spin a hefty profit. The same is not true for the NBA and NHL, and the fact it was more-or-less true in the NFL was one of the main reasons why there was only one preseason game that was lost.

However, the bigger reason is, in my opinion, basically the realization by both the owners and the MLBPA that to have a work stoppage, especially a work stoppage that cancels the playoffs, is a case of mutually assured destruction. Even if one side were to “win”, they’d end up far worse off than they had been before. The 1994 strike was proof of that: fans abandoned baseball until Cal Ripken, the home run chase and the late-90s Yankees dynasty brought it back. However, had the 2002 labor dispute ended in a work stoppage, there was no guarantee that any heroes would come over the hill to save the day. It just wasn’t worth the risk, so they came to terms, and have done so every CBA since.

That lesson, alas, has not yet come to the NHL.