NBA, MLB plot return, and we miss them — and yet sports have never seemed so trivial | Opinion
Tread lightly, sports.
Tread carefully, leagues, teams and athletes, as you inch toward an eventual return to live games for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down starting March 11.
Tread carefully beyond the health risk, of course.
We hear the league commissioners say the health safety of their players, coaches and staff is paramount, but we all know better.
The rush to return — to play games in isolated locales even as fans are not permitted to attend — is plainly about finances first, about turning on the spigot to let some semblance of cash flow start again.
In one respect you cannot blame desperate leagues like the NBA and MLB for devising their comeback plans despite the risk. These are not nonprofit organizations or charities. Quite the opposite.
But it isn’t much different than the federal government gradually reopening the country to stem a cratering economy — even as trusted science and medical experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci warn the likelihood of added preventable “suffering and death” if states reopen businesses too soon and the pandemic spikes again.
In major sports (as in government), financial health is apparently deemed worth the risk. I’m not even saying that’s wrong. But baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and basketball’s Adam Silver shouldn’t be out front saying they need to play again because the American people need their sports.
We really don’t. Not that badly. Not nearly as much as the leagues need the revenue.
Sports has an additional problem to beware as it plots its return:
The optics.
The haggle over money. Billionaire teams owners and millionaire millennial players negotiating reduced salaries that will still keep them all rich as the U.S. coronavirus death toll tops 83,000 and the unemployment forecast rivals the depths of the Great Depression of the early 1930s.
It isn’t a good look.
ESPN baseball analyst Jeff Passan said this week, “I don’ think players are going to give up a single cent this year” beyond a March agreement on prorated salaries. It is believed the MLBPA may push for deferred compensation, a hurdle to many owners.
As a money fight looms in baseball, the NBA and its players association agreed on a 25 percent reduction in player salaries on their twice-monthly paychecks starting this week. But even reduced, those are exorbitant salaries at a time of catapulting unemployment.
One also wonders about the optics of teams and athletes having available COVID-19 testing not readily available to everybody else. It may be paramount to keep athletes healthy. But should it be more paramount than it is to keep you or I or anybody else healthy?
It’s just a tough sell right now — for millionaire athletes to resume playing games when their fans cannot even attend, when their fans have bigger concerns.
We all inch back to normalcy through something unprecedented, with the effect on our local teams at the center of it for so many fans. Weird times when we realize, in its absence, that cheering is such a big part of our lives’ soundtrack.
Strange times, indeed, when we’ve never missed sports more — and yet sports have never seemed more trivial.
