I'd watch as many games as possible.
This fellow disagrees. He doesn't even sound like a baseball fan:
Some Guy from Cincinnata wrote:
Is Baseball really this important?
ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan writes today of a plan being considered by MLB to begin playing games again next month. It’s optimistic, hopeful and exciting. Also, crazy, troublesome and reckless. Passan:
Major League Baseball and its players are increasingly focused on a plan that could allow them to start the season as early as May and has the support of high-ranking federal public health officials who believe the league can safely operate amid the coronavirus pandemic, sources told ESPN.
Though the plan has a number of potential stumbling blocks, it has emerged above other options as the likeliest to work and has been embraced by MLB and MLB Players Association leadership, who are buoyed by the possibility of baseball's return and the backing of federal officials, sources said.
Playing baseball as the virus is peaking in some places and just starting to level off in others seems frivolous at best and dangerous at worst. And yet, it would provide a litmus for our ability to manage vigilantly a raging plague. Could we do it?
We can’t even get 50 governors to shut down their states. We have selfish kids partying on Clearwater Beach and in Over the Rhine and Louisville.
What say you?
If you read Passan’s piece, it sounds as if Baseball is establishing a colony on Mars.
No fans. No mound visits. Electronic strike zones, to eliminate violations of social distancing. Players sitting six feet apart, in the stands.
Players living in hotels, quarantined bubbles, with the possibility of not seeing their families for four and a half months if the virus doesn’t allow games in home parks.
The plan would require special treatment for players, coaches etc. That means testing. Can you imagine needing a test and being unable to get one, while baseball players have them at the ready?
Passan: Most important would be a significant increase in available coronavirus tests with a quick turnaround time, which sources familiar with the plan believe will happen by early May and allow MLB's testing to not diminish access for the general public.
Bullspit. Has anyone seen any indication that tests will be available en masse to you and me by May? I haven’t.
What’s the message being sent? It depends on your level of optimism or cooperation. It says, “Look, baseball’s back! These guys are OK, we must be OK. Social distancing is for snowflakes.’’ Or, maybe you resent the hell out of MLB. They’re playing a game for millions of dollars while I’m unemployed and can’t even get tested? Is this what we want?
There is hope among leadership on both sides that the combination of receiving paychecks for playing and baseball's return offering a respite to a nation beset by the devastation of COVID-19 would convince players to agree to the plan, sources said.
Accent on the former. If Baseball were genuinely concerned with the public’s well being, it wouldn’t even ponder resuming in the middle of the pandemic. Period. No other sport has even considered it.
Worse, Baseball is saying it won’t shut down if someone in the game tests positive. It’d just expand rosters and chuck the sick guy into quarantine. Next man up. Passan:
“Officials do not believe that a positive test alone would necessarily because to quarantine an entire team or shut down the season, sources said. The plan could include teams carrying significantly expanded rosters to account for the possibility of players testing positive.’’
As we’ve learned, people can carry the virus for days, even weeks, and not show symptoms.
This isn’t a smart move. It’s too Out There even to be seen as hopeful.
South Korea, which had first case of the virus on the same day the U.S. did, is doing much better than we are, because it was aggressively proactive in fighting the disease. Its pro baseball league will open its season April 20. If anyone connected to the Korean Baseball Organization gets sick, they shut down the whole deal. That sounds a whole lot more responsible than what MLB is pondering.
I miss baseball a lot. I miss what it represents. Spring, summer, normalcy. I’m not OK with this idea. Get back to me in July.