Baseball in a Bubble: Why MLB’s bizarre plan to resume games would be unfair to players | Opinion
Sports is feeling its way through this thing, arms stretched out and small, hesitant steps in a pitch-black room. When to resume and how? Fans? No fans? Leagues plot their resumption awkwardly, inconsistently, with no template or map to rely on.
Clemson’s Dabo Swinney (who flew his private jet to Florida for vacation in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic) says he has “no doubt” college football will start on time with packed stadiums. ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit says he would be “shocked” if the college or NFL seasons were played at all.
Somebody is way wrong. Nobody can be sure of anything right now.
The Summer Olympics, Wimbledon and the British Open all cancel for the year and postpone entirely until 2021 — but now Major League Baseball is plotting to resume games in May?
Somebody is way wrong. Nobody knows anything.
Unprecedented circumstances. No neat end-date to when COVID-19 will no longer be a threat to kill us, or perhaps recur if we all get back to normal too soon. In a pitch-black room, one is never quite sure what the next step should be.
There are still too many bizarre thinkers around. Like ill-informed, tone-deaf Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy, who wants to get his team together May 1. Like the Tampa-area preacher arrested after holding full church services despite a stay-at-home order. Like anybody who wants to return to normal the minute the pandemic curve starts to flatten — putting us all at risk of the beast reawakening and spreading anew.
Commerce is in play. It can become a money vs. health issue.
President Donald Trump wants desperately to “reopen” the country and reignite a sinking U.S. economy, while his medical advisers are more cautious in saying the stay-at-home edict is saving lives.
The same conundrum is at play in sports — with baseball now the prime example with its controversial new plan to resume games in May, with all 30 teams playing games in the Phoenix area, with no fans allowed.
Baseball in a bubble.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported the plan this week. MLB in a statement said it is considering the one-location option but that, “We have not settled on that option or developed a detailed plan.”
Said Marlins CEO Derek Jeter on Wednesday: “It’s tough to say. It’s all speculation. Most importantly we need to make sure our community is safe, then you worry about getting back on the field playing baseball. Are we playing in a month, playing in two months, playing in three months? Nobody really knows? You don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
MLB suspended spring training games March 12 and delayed the start of its season. Miami missed its 13th game on Wednesday.
Jeter said no Marlins player or anyone in the organization has tested positive for COVID-19. Harking to his Yankees days after 9/11, he also mentioned the healing power of sports.
There is no question resuming baseball in May or soon would be a good idea for the club owners. Games, even in empty stadiums, mean television revenue, which means profits.
There also is little question it would be a good idea for fans starving to watch live sports again, and it appears baseball is eager to win the dubious race to play games again, while the more cautious NBA and NHL have yet to announce whether or when or how their seasons might resume.
But is it a good idea for the health and well-being of the hundreds of ballplayers and their families?
It is hard to envision the MLB Players Association loving this idea.
It is also hard to imagine the massive logistical issues of moving 30 teams to one city could be solved in time to begin in May.
Beyond that, is it morally right to be shouting “Play ball!” and playing ghost games in the middle of a pandemic that as of Wednesday had killed some 85,000 world-wide and more than 13,000 in the U.S? A health crisis we’re still in the midst of?
Players would be separated from their families for four-plus months and quarantined in isolation in hotels, leaving only to go to and from the ballparks.
At games, instead of sitting bunched up in dugouts, players would be in seats in the stands, several feet apart from one another.
There would be seven-inning doubleheaders played to catch up to the schedule, get all the games in, make up as much financial ground as possible.
Players would round the bases after a winning home run to complete silence save for their own teammates’ cheers.
The whole thing is bizarre. Eerie. Reads like a script from a dystopian film set in 2055, one that might or might not involve zombies.
The MLB plan would leave the players little choice: Play or don’t get paid. Increase your own health risk, despite the precautions, or don’t get paid. Separate from your wife and kids, your loved ones, for months at a time amid unprecedented anxiety for all, or don’t get paid.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health have supported the plan with the proviso players and team entourages stay isolated and keep social distancing.
All it would take is one player or coach or umpire to test positive for the virus to make this look like even more of a colossal misjudgment than it already does. But MLB would let teams carry expanded rosters to account for players who might test positive and miss games while in quarantine.
So bizarre.
We all want games again. But like this?
This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 12:26 PM.
