This week the Major League Baseball (MLB) social experiment season reinforced the fact that we are in a season like no other in the middles of a global COVID-19 pandemic.
After over a dozen players and staff tested positive for COVID-19, the Miami Marlins had a week’s worth of games postponed. As a result of the Marlins outbreak, the Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees, and Philadelphia Phillies also had games postponed based on their proximity to either the Marlins, or the clubhouse in Philadelphia used by the Marlins.
In a statement announcing the move to basically quarantine an entire team, MLB noted, “that it is most prudent to allow the Marlins time to focus on providing care for their players and planning their Baseball Operations for a resumption early next week.”
The fact that a team would have an outbreak of COVID-19 in and of itself is not surprise. In fact, each team as a pool of 30 “break glass in case of emergency” players to handle just such an event. Of course, I am sure most teams thought they would be able to get further into the season without having to deal with an outbreak.
The Marlins were shut down while the other teams either continued to play, or rearranged their schedules to avoid games against the Marlins later in the week. One has to wonder whether the entire MLB season would have been called if one of the more popular teams with higher payrolls became infected.
The Miami Marlins are in quarantine in Philadelphia after over a dozen players and staff tested positive for COVID-19. Games in Philadelphia were cancelled after other teams voiced concerns about using the same clubhouse that the Marlins had just left. The Phillie Phanatic could not be reached for comment.
Photo R. Anderson
That is nothing against the Marlins, I like the Marlins. In fact, I still have a program, shirt and hat from their first season in 1993.
Also, Don Mattingly, the current manager of the Marlins, was one of my favorite baseball players growing up.
But there is certainly a difference in parking a team that likely was not going to make the 16-team cutoff for the playoffs, versus parking a team like the Yankees or Dodgers that many people consider World Series bound.
The Marlins will spend their week off trying to find enough players to field a competitive team but there is a chance they may not be able to continue the season. Before the series was cancelled, the Washington Nationals voted unanimously to not travel to Miami for games since it is one of the hottest of hot spots for COVID-19. So, even if the Marlins do resume the season, it is possible they may find that no one wants to play them at Marlins Park.
That calls to mind the biggest flaw of the MLB season. While most leagues that are resuming competition are doing so in a bubble environment to mitigate virus spread, MLB owners basically demanded that games be played in their home ballparks even if those Ballparks were located in the middle of a COVID-19 hot spot.
As mentioned previously, the Toronto Blue Jays, will play the season as a team without a country after the Canadian government nixed their plan of letting ballplayers cross the U.S. and Canadian border freely. So, with the exception of the “Buffalo” Blue Jays wandering the East Coast like a hiker on the Appalachian Trail, the remaining team owners are recouping some revenue by using their home Ballparks versus sharing a bubble, while counting on players to police themselves and stay in the hotel on road trips instead of hitting the town.
While the source of the Marlins outbreak has not been traced the Associated Press reported that at least one Miami player left the team hotel when the team was in Atlanta and could have been exposed there.
The actions of the Marlins players to decide via a group text that they would still take the field even after some players tested positive show that COVID-19 is not going to be corralled under MLB’s plan since it relies too much on the players for enforcement.
With the Marlins outbreak, it becomes more and more likely that the 2020 MLB social experiment will be cut short due to forces outside the control of the owners; allowing them to play the victim card instead of showing real upfront leadership.
If MLB is bound and determined to crown a 2020 World Series Champion, just cancel the season and give the title to the team that ends up with the fewest COVID-19 infections on their roster.
The season never should have started. MLB could have been a beacon of responsibility by saying that baseball is not an essential business, and it is too risky to players and employees to try to crisscross the country creating made for television games. Airing Public Service Announcements with players wearing masks and encouraging social distancing would have been so much more responsible than a few hours of baseball a night.
It is time for the adults in the room to shut the MLB season down and try again next year. Of course, those adults are the same people who insisted on playing in their home ballparks with advertising covered tarpaulins over many of the empty seats. I doubt owners will do much in the way of canceling the season despite the growing evidence that players are going to be sick and ignore the safety protocols since it would cause them to admit they were wrong.
The 2020 MLB season will continue to roll along, and players will continue to get sick. Teams will be placed in timeout, and the schedule will continue to get reworked to ensure that teams are able to get those precious 60-games in, so that 16-teams can earn some of that sweet playoff television revenue.
The Baltimore Orioles traveled to Miami for a series against the Marlins. The only problem being the Marlins were in quarantine in Philadelphia after over a dozen players and staff tested positive for COVID-19, forcing the Orioles to turn around and fly back home. The Marlins are still stuck in Philadelphia after MLB cancelled a week’s worth of their games.
Photo R. Anderson
The optics MLB is projecting come across as “player health be damned, there’s baseball to be played.”
That approach sounds an awful lot like a guy in Washington D.C. who is ignoring the science since he wants the economy and schools to reopen, and for people to act like there is nothing to see here; since it would benefit him in November.
With blinders on, and the distraction of watching baseball, it is easy for some people to ignore the over 150,000 Americans who have died due to the lack of a centralized plan to combat the COVID-19 virus.
Those 150,000 and counting Americans are not just numbers. They were fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, sons, daughters, grandparents, husbands, wives, coworkers and friends. Some of them were baseball fans, and some of them probably even voted for that guy in Washington D.C. who listens to the “Demon sperm” doctor who claims she cured COVID-19, instead of listening to real science.
For some people, it is easier to play the victim than the hero. Even if one wants to blame someone on the other side of the world for allowing COVID-19 to come to our majestic shores, and spread from sea to shining sea, the fact is the virus is here. It is going to continue to rage against the machine of indifference and spin. COVID-19 does not care if someone is playing the blame game, or wondering out loud why they aren’t as popular as other people.
But by all means, play ball and tout drugs that the legitimate scientists say don’t really help with COVID-19, like a fiddle playing Roman emperor, instead of standing up and actually trying to be part of the solution by leading with a national strategy.
I don’t know how we got here as a country. America used to be looked at with a level of respect by the majority of the world. Now, those same countries are likely either pitying us, or shaking their heads in disbelief. It is time for people to wake up and take COVID-19 seriously.
Baseball can always come back next year. If we do not get a handle on COVID-19, there will be a lot fewer fans around to watch it. You know, because they will be dead from that virus people got tired of and decided to try to ignore. Those are facts and not self-serving conspiracy theory laced spin.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol showed old Ebenezer that he had the power to change his ways to ensure that Tiny Tim’s chair was not empty the following year. However, it seems that many people are content to decrease what they view to be the surplus population by ignoring COVID-19, and saying “bah humbug,” while they engage in self-serving activities and worry about filling their money vaults.
Now if you’ll excuse me, that’s enough Dickens for one day.
Copyright 2020 R. Anderson