I love baseball. It has been a huge part of my life for almost six decades.
Growing up in St. Louis, you learn the words to get me to the ball game at a young age. You grow up with your own family and, at the same time, with a second called Cardinal Nation.
As much as I, and millions of others, would love to see baseball play in 2020, the best course of action would be for the Major Leagues to give up on the current season.
This goes beyond baseball executives wondering how to create a short season schedule. It’s more about preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus and the safety concerns of everyone involved, both on and off the field.
Consider the players first. There will be 26 of them on each team this year. How do you practice social distancing sitting on the bench and in the clubhouse? How do they avoid the collective contact that could lead to the transmission of the virus?
On the field, will players continue to emit internal fluids when spitting gum and sunflower seeds? How do they organize to steal bases and avoid collisions with members of the opposing team, or should they?
Traveling should be an important consideration. Should teams get on a plane every three or four days? Impossible to maintain social distancing on a plane with so many on board. Perhaps management should employ a fleet of aircraft for security reasons.
Coaches and managers appear to be most at risk. Most are between 40, 50 and 60 years old. Do they need to wear protective masks and gloves in the dugout? How do you protect yourself from being around a large group of young people? All it takes is one to be a carrier of the disease without knowing it.
The health of coaches and other staff must be taken into account. Those who need to care for players on a day-to-day basis for bumps, bruises and illnesses may require all kinds of protective clothing to do their job.
If a manager, coach, or player contracts the virus, does MLB quarantine that team for weeks? How will that affect the pennant races and the rest of the calendar? If that person’s situation becomes critical or worse, will MLB shut everything down?
Also, all safety-conscious fans will stay away. MLB will have to deal with empty stadiums. The sound of the ball hitting the bat will reverberate through the porous 50,000-seat stadiums. The overall quality of the game experience will be compromised.
Smarter heads than this are currently working on these problems. However, until a vaccine is found and administered, logic would tell you that as much as we would all love for our teams to hit the field, MLB had better get through it this season.
In the words of the musical Damn Yankees, “until next year.”