But I'm not stupid.
This is stupid
If you don't feel like reading it the crux is
- potentially dramatically modified games
- played to empty stadiums
- only in Arizona
- with teams and personnel sequestered for the length of the season
So no - it can't work. Not in the sense "no one is going to get the disease over the course of a third of a year". At least it can't work starting in May. The possibility grows the further out we get - the more the virus is controlled and the more we know about potential therapies.
But think about this - Japan has around 40% of the US population. It is packed almost 4x as tight. They should be doing worse than the US but they only have about 4000 coronavirus cases about 250 more yesterday. (If the US was doing that successfully - just factoring in population and not density we would have about 10K cases instead of... 368K) But even there they loosened things up just a little bit - started baseball - and 3 players promptly got the disease. They are saying the end of April is not possible and are looking at May.
And MLB is supposed to be looking at the same time frame?
I want baseball back. I've made that clear. But it can't be done until it can be done safely and if we are lucky May isn't when that is going to be, May is going to be when we'll have an idea of when that date may be.
This isn't something that holds for the entire country. The country might be able to get going sometime weeks from now (I've said Memorial Day since it started) relying on lots of testing, limited travel, possible invasive tracking, and rolling quarantines to get us through the remaining months to vaccine. Sports can handle limited travel, but they can't handle rolling quarantines. You can't shut off a team, and everyone they've had contact with, for two weeks and start up again. It won't work.
Some more individualized sports may be able to get through this, with strong restrictions, when it calms down. Golf. Bowling. Possibly tennis. Anything that can be run with limited staff (sorry NASCAR) and next to no contact between distant individual players. But baseball is not that. Baseball can't start up until we get past the limited quarantine stage and right now I can tell you for sure May is not going to be the month we get past that.
11 comments:
Totally agree Harper, and even despite all the complicated health challenges, they would be playing most games outside in Arizona in the Summer? No day games that's for sue. Whew!
Harper - not sure if you've addressed this here or on twitter or elsewhere, but at this point what is your prediction for how/when/if baseball returns? If that's simply too unknown at this point, how would you advise the league to proceed given what we know at the moment? What should they be looking for or milestones to cross? Just interested in your take on how this could or should resolve itself.
Thanks! And I'm sure many of your readers agree that even in these dark, no-baseball times, this blog is always a fun and interesting read.
Originally - March 12th - I said "Memorial Day, possibly without crowds". I'd update that to now "All-Star Weekend definitely no crowds" but with huge grains of salt
For baseball - or any team sport - to continue you have to have near zero cases and quick testing available on demand because you can't afford mid-season quarantines. Right now the country is getting close to "maybe having testing for people that need it". So we're a long way off on that second point.
The first point... if this was a simple peak we'd be a month out until we're back to a low enough number of cases to move forward. But it's going to be protracted (a week or two, not a day) and a long slow decline (given the differing stay at home orders) So maybe we reach that first week in June? That gives me the AS weekend hope.
Until those are reached you can pretty much roll "not in the next 6 weeks"
The only scenario where things change is some type of organized medical cure or treatment for the condition. We won't have a vaccine for a year. But there is quite a bit of forward movement on medications and treatments. It will take months for any new "treatment" to be tested and okayed --- but there are medicines that might work out there that have already been tested (not chloroquin...).
HIV was a slow moving death train for everyone that had it before antiretrovirals. Now its a controllable condition. It took ten years to get there, but we did. No vaccine, just treatment.
So I'm hopeful that --- globally --- a treatment will be developed that can stop this thing in its tracks. Then and only then will life get back to normal...
Mostly agree. One twist would be if we get a large scale antigen test and it turns out many are immune.
Let's say MLB does for whatever reason move forward with this idiotic plan. How many players are going to just say no? Just off the top of my head, I look at a guy like Zimm who's on a 1 year deal, is a family man, and doesn't need the money. No way he opts to play, he's gonna stay home. We'd potentially be looking at a league where any player not on a rookie contract is going to question whether it's worthwhile to sequester themselves away from family for months on end.
Sure there'd be contract ramifications, but the players who make a boatload (see Trout, Mike or Harper, Bryce or Cole, Gerritt) could probably turn it around on the team and file a suit through the MLBPA saying their teams cannot force them to play in unsafe conditions. I just don't see the players and the league coming to a good agreement with a plan like this. Baseball is just a game
I for one, am not looking forward to the "MLB: The Show" World Series being televised this fall. Gamers have more experience sheltering in place than most, as long as the hot pocket and cheetos supply line is intact.
Agree with every word of this Harper, thanks.
A small injury can be hurt mentally more than physically. They have to work regularly to get their energy back. They can start walking a bit by bit with the help of walking frames to keep up the positive mindset. So don't be negative.
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