Major League Baseball's owners voted unanimously to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement Thursday, ending the league's 99-day lockout of the players and salvaging a 162-game season that will begin April 7, sources familiar with the situation told ESPN.
With the end of the second-longest work stoppage in the game's history, spring training camps will open Sunday, free-agent signings can begin Thursday night, and baseball will attempt to return to some semblance of normalcy after months of fraught negotiations.
The deal materialized after talks ratcheted up this week, when the league made a proposal that bridged the significant gap in the competitive-balance tax, a key issue in the end stages of talks.