MLB lockout looms as league, players still can't reach agreement

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are reportedly nowhere close to reaching common ground, meaning the lockout everyone feared is much closer to happening.

According to ESPN, the two sides met in Irving, Texas, on Tuesday ahead of the Dec. 1, 11:59 p.m. ET expiration of the current CBA to agree on a new set of terms. 

Both sides have reportedly tweaked their expectations but are no closer to agreeing on certain terms.

A big sticking point is the time frame for players to go solo and make more money. Players want a smaller window of time before they hit free agency or go into arbitration. Teams, not surprisingly, want to keep the current framework and add more postseason games and install a salary floor.

The Players Association has proposed other ways of bringing in more revenue. The league doesn't want to budge. Nobody's happy.

As former MLB executive Marty Conway told CNBC, it's just a whole lot of back and forth. 

"I look at it as a tug of war," Conway said. "There’s a marker in the ground and ribbon on the rope. The winner is the one that pulls that ribbon to their side of the mid-line."

Unfortunately, that little "tug-of-war" is about to send America's Passtime into its first stoppage since 1994 -- which was long enough to cancel the World Series that year.