MLB, you had to go make this grown woman cry. Save sports fans from COVID, inflation, war.

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, you don't know me. I'm a nobody to you. I get it: I'm just an A's fan. And baseball fans don't mean a cent to you right now. On Tuesday, you shut down Opening Day and the first two series of the 2022 season. 

If the MLB, team owners and the players' union don't meet again as early as Thursday or agree on a deal soon, it could result in the first regular season games lost to a labor dispute since 1995.

If this happens, you know as well as I do that it won't be just a “millionaires vs. billionaires” contract negotiations failure. Aside from the freedom, fair play and sportsmanship on the line, you have to be a stone-cold millionaire, commissioner Manfred, not to realize how much having sports to watch during this pandemic has helped save millions of us from going stir crazy. 

Three strikes: COVID, inflation, nuclear-armed Russia 

We know that there are now COVID-19 vaccines and that pandemic restrictions have eased, but we also know that the coronavirus isn't done with us yet. Many people, for health reasons or other circumstances, still don't want to or can't leave their bubbles. Americans now have also been hit with stress over inflation and fears over what Russia's war on Ukraine means for us and for the rest of the world.

We need to escape after a day of work and school and doom scrolling. And sports is one of those escapisms. MLB is now robbing from the little treasures we nonmillionaires have.

Those who've known me for eons are guffawing as they read this: me a sports fan! Growing up in Phoenix, my siblings played tennis; I resented my parents if they made me drop a book to go outside. After meeting my future husband in Southern California, I knew I loved him when I allowed his parents to buy me a bicycle so that, for heaven's sake, I could go on bike rides with them around Newport Beach's Back Bay.   

Why am I an A's fan when I'm not from Oakland and have never lived there? The same reason why I still follow the NFL Raiders though they've moved to Las Vegas, the same reason why I'm on the injury list because of what's happening to the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers: My husband, Bob, has been following these teams since he was a kid. Habits grow over a quarter-century of a marriage, and one of ours is watching these teams play to wind down our nights. In fact, even after Bob falls asleep on many of these nights, I'm still up watching the end of games and trying not to scream at the TV over wins and losses. 

But it's so much more than the wins and losses. I get obsessed about the players, their superpowers, their backstories, how they handle their careers and treat their loved ones. And witnessing literal and figurative curveballs, historic game changers, unknown athletes suddenly catapulted to stardom – pass me the nuts and chips already. 

Lockdowns, quarantines then surprise: NBA bubble

I admit, though, that there have been many years when I'm just a casual sports fan and don't really pay attention until the semifinals. But 2020 was not one of those years.

The coronavirus shut down all the nonessentials that March, so forget about your tickets to concerts, games, travel. You're lucky to be alive. Or if you still had a job. 

My journal entries that year either began with daily numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, or ended with them. From spring into the summer, we had to figure out how to protect our parents and how to move our college kids back into our three-generation household. Though I was extremely blessed to have my loved ones around me, dread and frustration still littered my diary pages. 

Then lo and behold, the NBA figured out a way to resume basketball games: a pandemic bubble in Orlando. People doubted it could be done. But after 107 days, 172 games and thousands of COVID-19 tests at the Disney campus, the season succeeded with zero positive cases and with the Los Angeles Lakers winning the championship on Oct. 11, 2020.

During those 100+ days, my journal often ended with the score of a basketball game – gleefully, gratefully, as in OMFG I forgot all about the grim reaper outside my doors for a couple of hours of sports. 

Are you still reading this, Commish?

Because even as the NBA soared to a slam dunk for me that summer and fall, this was my journal entry for Friday July 31, 2020: A week ago, baseball returned, but MLB has no bubble. Sure enough, by Tuesday (the) Miami Marlins reported that 15 players and two staff members tested positive and had to suspend their schedule. 

From 12:12 a.m. Wednesday Aug. 12, 2020: (Just) watched and celebrated with Bob as Blazers sweated through a 134-131 win against the Dallas Mavericks. They play next on Thursday. I'm now watching the A's struggling against the L.A. Angels. What a difference between the NBA and the MLB – bubble in one place vs. traveling to games; right kinds of masks vs. these flimsy, scarf-like face coverings.

World Series: Field of dreams

Despite the 2020 baseball season starting, stopping because of positive COVID-19 tests, starting again and being quarantined, the MLB did score a World Series and the Dodgers won that late October. 

And this year? Will the World Series only be a field of dreams? Other leagues are operating just fine. It's not COVID that has grounded baseball; it's the owners and the MLB "leaders."

During our computer screen meeting – because, of course, we're still all working remotely – when my colleagues started discussing the MLB lockout and the stalled negotiations, I found my voice cracking as I recounted how sports was so important to so many of us during those days before COVID vaccines, fighting against hopelessness and despair. I started tearing up, a grown woman crying over a bunch of boys of summer playing a simple game, as a "Bull Durham" character says: "You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. You got it?"

The players get it. The fans get it. But to the billionaire team owners and the millionaire commissioner who have the power and the dollars to save this baseball season, we fans are just non-cents.

Thuan Le Elston, a member of USA TODAY's Editorial Board, is the author of "Rendezvous at the Altar: From Vietnam to Virginia." Follow her on Twitter: @thuanelston