Baseball season is now a sprint, football looking more doubtful
LLANO, Texas — Baseball is back, if you can call it baseball when a season is 60 games, runner on second to start every extra inning, no spitting, no high-fiving, no in-your-face arguing with umps, no fans, no farm clubs, no National League ban on designated-hitting, and hardly any civility between those who own the teams and those who perform the labor.
There’s never been a chill on the summer game to compare to what’s gripping it now. At the end of the impasse the players agreed to the microschedule imposed by Commissioner Rob Manfred, but they did not give up their right to file a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board.
Expect litigation in federal courts, as we’ve seen before. The union will argue that the owners negotiated in “bad faith” by not disclosing financial records and insisting on a shorter schedule than was necessary.
The season is scheduled, somewhat tentatively, to open on Friday, July 24, following a 3-week “spring” training.
In the rush to begin, some safety is being compromised. Players returning from overseas are not required to quarantine for 14 days as the Centers for Disease Control recommends. Baseball, after all, is an Essential Business.
The problem with American sports today is that safety is constantly being compromised, as the country tries to ignore the most disruptive pandemic it’s ever experienced.
Coronavirus has fired its warning shots, with the Phillies, Blue Jays, Astros, Angels and Rockies having infected players. Colorado’s $21 million outfielder, Charlie Blackmon, tested positive, but most names are being withheld. Which tells you something else that’s disturbing about this disease: it has a stigma. More troubling: Most of the athletes recently testing positive are showing no symptoms, even though they’re contagious. Which makes it impossible to control.
Some athletes think being asymptomatic means immunity from Covid ever ravaging the lungs. Yet others will interpret it as a disability that might never heal and won’t be forgotten at the next contract negotiation. Scarred lungs stay scarred.
If history teaches us anything – and I have my doubts – it’s that global tragedies turn out to be more devastating than initially believed. Agent Orange was harmless for many years, and then it wasn’t. The world isn’t old enough to know the full effects of its nuclear explosions and other atmospheric contaminations. COVID-19 will be around longer than we think.
How tight is the bubble for baseball? Lots of air travel, lots of hotels. Even without maid service there will be contacts with thousands of people who aren’t being tested. You think ballplayers will stay out of bars?
Miami Beach mayor Dan Gelbert observed, “There are a whole group of people who feel it’s a political statement if they wear a mask, so they won’t do it. We need to get everyone united, as if a hurricane was coming at us.”
Austin mayor Steve Adler said, “We need everybody to religiously wear their masks.” And yet, millions of religious people won’t wear masks. It’s like motorcycle riders not wearing helmets. It’s inconvenient, and we all die anyway, and God will take care of us or not. Might as well live on the edge. There could be grim justice here, that we get what we deserve.
But don’t think it’s just people dying who were near death anyway. Deaths are happening to 17-year-olds and 25-year-olds and unborn babies, which might concern the pro-lifers. One of the PGA’s rising stars, Cameron Champ, is 25 and infected.
People who should know better are taking risks. The world’s greatest tennis player, Novak Djokovic, who’s 33, was video-taped on a crowded dance floor and subsequently tested positive. “I was wrong and it was too soon,” he said.
As much as baseball is altered in this pandemic era, it’s not as compromised as football, with lots of kneeling, no slapping of butts but otherwise barely a hint of social distancing, attendance to be determined.
Football coaches such as Sean McVay and John Harbaugh and medical experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci doubt football is feasible in a pandemic world. The canceling of the August Hall of Fame Game looks like a precursor to more cancellations. As for college football, the virus has struck about half of the Texas Longhorns, Clemson Tigers and national champion LSU Tigers. Some schools are wondering if football should be delayed until spring.
Horse racing has done well without fans attending (they can bet on-line), but Churchill Downs announced it will allow “limited” attendance in the grandstands and infield of a Kentucky Derby delayed four months to the First Saturday in September. Social distancing will be “encouraged,” but this will be a sprawling indoor/outdoor cocktail party – millions of droplets in the air.
While horse racing, car racing, golf and tennis can go on without their games being severely altered, basketball, football and baseball will look more like intrasquad scrimmages than big-league events. How much of the drama will be lost?
Baseball is now a sprint. Teams with deep pitching staffs – LA Dodgers, New York Yankees – lose much of their advantage. The condemned Houston Astros are undeserving beneficiaries. They got four more months of healing for potential ace Lance McCullers coming back from Tommy John surgery. And their current ace, 37-year-old Justin Verlander, was worn out by the end of last season but should have enough energy to go the distance for this. The world is getting smaller.
