LAUSR

This study was conducted during the 2022 Major League Baseball lockout to determine how sports journalism students’ union sentiment, baseball fandom, and baseball knowledge could predict whether they sympathized more with management or players and their perception of the players’ union. We found that sports journalism students generally lean pro-union, and their baseball fandom fell into three fandom subcategories: appreciation for athletes’ physical skill, living vicariously through the athletes, and socialization/escapism. Students’ average score on the baseball strategy knowledge test was 65%. Results of a multiple regression found that the higher participants’ pro-union sentiment, escapism/socialization, and appreciation for physical skill, the more they sympathized with players during the lockout. The only significant predictor of a promanagement stance, however, was students’ antiunion sentiment. Using sports journalism students’ fandom, union sentiment, and baseball strategy knowledge, regression models could predict 83% and 84% of the variability in students’ respective proplayer and promanagement sympathies.