Opinion
Send ’em home. Just stop. Baseball’s coronavirus season experiment reeks of failure
Nobody wants to watch baseball more than I, but Major League Baseball needs to shut it down now.
Cancel the rest of this cursed MLB 2020 season. Send everybody home. Let baseball be the symbol of how not to respond to a worldwide pandemic.
Actually, we have plenty of examples of that starting in the Oval Office. But baseball needs to stop now because it can’t protect its people. And if it can’t protect its players and personnel from a deadly virus, why are they playing games? Why are they risking lives and infections?
Already, 10% of players have tested positive for COVID-19. Some teams, such as the Miami Marlins, have been ravaged by a widespread outbreak. The Marlins season is already on pause. Same goes for the Philadelphia Phillies, the team of Sacramento native Rhys Hoskins. The St Louis Cardinals had two positive tests announced on Friday, followed by reports of more positive tests and the postponement of Saturday’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers. It all lends momentum to the idea that baseball should say “uncle.”
Already, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has warned that the season could be shut down as soon as Monday, according to ESPN.
Why wait, Mr. Commissioner?
The current 60-game season was doomed from the start because players and management couldn’t figure out a smart way to come back, much less protect the players.
The Marlins have 20 players who have tested positive. On Friday, reports said these poor devils – the infected Marlins players – were going to be transported by bus from Philadelphia, where they have been in quarantine since the team-wide breakout, to Florida. From there, the players would be quarantined at an undisclosed location.
Can you imagine being part of that unfortunate traveling party?
Baseball has no bubble
And even among teams with healthy players, the games have been, well, weird. Cardboard cutouts in the stands? Walk-off celebrations with players not touching each other, compensating by jumping up and down like one big aerobics class?
Have I watched? Yeah. Is baseball a blessing? Sure. But the rancor between players and owners before the season of 2020 began has come back to bite them. Baseball doesn’t have a protective bubble, like the NBA, where players – so far – have avoided mass breakouts because they are all confined to a protective space.
Baseball has no bubble, has players flying to different cities, which is not safe, and guess what? Outbreak.
COVID-19 really is that bad, that contagious, that dangerous.
Manfred gets a lot of stick and deserves it, but the players and owners own this mess. They couldn’t agree to suitable terms, they threw caution to the wind, they’re getting burned.
Baseball has always been a mirror of society at its best and worst. As a nation, we’ve utterly failed at combating COVID-19. And so has baseball.
Whether it’s America’s pastime anymore is debatable, but it’s clear that baseball needs to pass the time now by being safe and shutting down the season.
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