Of all the rambling rhetoric, all the spectacular spin, all the worthless word salads tossed about by both sides of baseball’s labor war, Rob Manfred – the capo di tutti capi of toothless, empty-suit commissioners forevermore – managed to provide the single-most-insulting observation of all Tuesday afternoon in Jupiter, Fla.

“The concern about our fans,” Manfred said, “is at the very top of our consideration list.”

Manfred said this with a straight face, which was actually quite a thing because he did spend some of the press conference literally cracking himself up at a time when those who actually like the sport he runs found themselves at a terrible internal crossroads:

Do I still care enough to cry? Or have the ghouls who run baseball’s warring factions finally frozen my soul forever?

The idea that Manfred – who, among other things, was captured by a photographer practicing his golf swing, Johnny Carson-style, as the seconds ticked away toward his self-imposed Armageddon – would even think to mention fans was laughable.

Fans are never part of the equation. In truth, fans maybe oughtn’t be part of the equation, because both sides make it perfectly clear that they are about their own interests first, foremost and forever, regardless of whatever verbal bones they wish to throw to their constituents.

Sports isn’t alone in this. Popular TV shows have been canceled for years, ignoring the outcry of fans. Hell, the Beatles broke up over business considerations while they were still the most popular musical act in history.

Fans be damned. Because fans are always damned.

Except baseball, always, has been different.

Baseball fans swear off the sport more often than any other: they hate entitled players, they loathe aloof owners, they are disillusioned by teams that don’t seem to care enough to win, or don’t spend enough to care. And yet: for those who truly love baseball, there has almost always been a path back.

Because baseball fans also have thicker skin and shorter memories than anyone. Jack McDowell once flipped off Yankees fans in the same season baseball returned from a near-ruinous strike. It seemed to embody everything about how the game, and the players, felt about the fans; a decade later the Yankees began a string of four straight seasons attracting more than 4 million fans to their games.

Mets fans threatened to revolt after the thumbs-down absurdity last summer; by the next homestand the Mets drew their three biggest crowds of the year to Citi Field for a Subway Series, and the faithful were hyper-engaged against the Yankees.

Baseball fans love baseball, even if it often feels unrequited.

During Manfred’s press conference Tuesday, I Tweeted this: “I love baseball. I grew up on baseball. I make a portion of my living thanks to baseball. There’s no better way, in my mind, to spend a summer night than watching baseball. I have forgiven baseball time and again, and certainly will do so again. I fear I am in the vast minority.”

It received 188 replies and they ran the gamut.

“I, too, am a sucker,” said Tim O’Shea.

“I will be back supporting when the season starts,” said Chris Scandaglia. “I love this game.”

Said Frank Boesch: “It’s too much a part of my life and who I am to give it up. It ties me to my past and brings back memories of those who I can no longer enjoy it with.”

So there are still true believers. But there are also plenty of voices like that belonging to Lou Reda, who said, “I stopped watching for four years after ’94. I didn’t miss baseball during COVID and I won’t miss it now.”

And William Connors: “Mike, baseball was my first true love. I punted after the ’94 strike and steroids, and haven’t spent one cent on the game since.”

And perhaps most tellingly, from Tom Bracken: “Mike, we will watch but our kids aren’t. And less and less kids are. The impact is slow but will hurt eventually.

I suspect most baseball fans will do as my late father did. Back in ’94, he told me he was done forever. Two years later, he asked me to buy him a T-shirt after the Yankees won the World Series. I called him on that.

“I get mad at your mother, too, sometimes,” he said sheepishly. “But I’ll always love her.”

My father was born in 1932. I was born in 1967. That’s baseball’s demographic right now, and there it will stay until the men who play it and operate begin to understand something: They can treat us as they wish. We’re in. We’ll stay in, most of us.

But folks with birth years like 1981 and 1992 and 2006 and 2017? They aren’t in yet, not for keeps. And baseball may already have lost them. Maybe forever. No matter how high on MLB’s “consideration list” they may find themselves.