“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr
- January 9th – The World Health Organization first announces a new variant of the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus, commonly known as COVID-19
- January 21st – The CDC confirms the first case in the United States
- February 3rd – The US declares a public health emergency
- February 25th – CDC says COVID-19 heading towards a pandemic (AJMC Staff, 2020)
- March 12th – MLB announces the remainder of Spring Training is canceled, with start of regular season TBD (MLB, 2020)
- July 23rd – Opening Day
- July 27th – 11 Miami Marlins players test positive for COVID-19 (Passan, 2020)
The world is almost unrecognizable from six months ago. Socializing with friends and family has turned from being something you’d look forward to into a taboo activity. Proms and graduation ceremonies across the country were canceled. The men’s NCAA March Madness tournament, an annual staple since 1939, was canceled for the first time in its history.
By the end of March, nearly every developed nation in the world had enacted “stay-at-home” orders with varying degrees of enforcement, as well as compliance. Countries that took early and aggressive measures to combat the virus have been rewarded with dramatically fewer cases:
- Despite posting the worst mortality rate of any nation, the United Kingdom was able to resume the Premier League (without fan attendance). In their first round of testing from May 17-18, 6/748 tests or 0.8% were positive. The last round, from July 20-26, had 0 out of 1,574 tests come back positive. (Johns Hopkins University, 2020) (Premier League, 2020)
- In South Korea, an East-Asian country known for being proactive with safety measures such as wearing facemasks, fans will soon be able to attend Korea Baseball Organization games at 30% capacity. (Tong-Hyung, 2020)
- New Zealand, a country with an admittedly low population (4.8 million) and population density similar to Oregon or Maine, has had only 1,556 cases and 22 deaths. (Ministry of Health, 2020)
In horrifically stark contrast, the United States has fared much worse. As I write this, there are over 4.25 million cases and 147,000 deaths. 778 deaths a day. Over 2.5x the number of American deaths from the Vietnam War, in a period of just six months instead of almost 20 years. (Wikipedia, 2020) While I could write about how we got here, and what we as a nation could have done to avoid this catastrophe, I won’t. By now you’ve read or heard a dozen other journalists explain just that. Instead I’m going to focus on how the sports world has reacted to this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, particularly those sports who have resumed, or are about to resume, their 2019-2020 seasons. And I’m going to talk about why the 2020 Major League Baseball season won’t reach its conclusion.
Rudy Gobert
There is only one place to start this story: March 11th, 2020, the day Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive. (Young, 2020) Days earlier Gobert infamously touched every reporters microphone, as he was skeptical of the coronavirus’ severity and potential to spread. When the NBA learned of his positive test result, they canceled the Jazz’ game in Oklahoma City minutes before tip-off. Within mere days the NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, NCAA, and countless other professional and collegiate sports leagues around the nation suspended operations indefinitely. Commissioner Adam Silver’s proactive response would pay off, as the NBA would become the first of the four major North American leagues (NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB) to resume any sort of competition. Their first exhibition game was on July 22nd, and with only 2 players out of several hundred testing positive for COVID-19 the remainder of their regular season and the NBA Playoffs seem likely to happen. (Schwartz, 2020) (Kim & Close, 2020) Speaking of testing, those results seem remarkable. In a nation where 8% of tests return positive, how did the NBA have only 2 cases in 322 players?
Bubble Boy(s)
COVID-19 is extremely contagious, and with a significant portion of positive carriers being asymptomatic, every human interaction is an opportunity to spread, or catch, the virus. The NBA, as well as NHL and MLS, decided upon a relatively simple solution: isolate the players under one roof, following strict regulations, for the remainder of the season. The theory is if they can control the player’s movements and actions, they can isolate and eradicate the virus from a finite population. The practice is considerably more complex, as each of the aforementioned leagues had to find housing, transportation, food, etc for thousands of players, coaches, trainers, equipment managers, front office executives, and more necessary personnel. And they needed to find a complex large enough to house an entire league that had both housing and facilities to play on. The NBA and MLS found their home at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. (Carlisle, 2020) The massive vacation destination is equipped with a surplus of fields and courts to host both leagues simultaneously. The NHL, meanwhile, has decided to split their league into two hub cities (Edmonton and Toronto) for their playoff tournament. (Rosen, 2020) But all three leagues have seen the “bubble” method pay off, with little to no positive cases in thousands of tests among players, coaches, and staff. The seemingly obvious plan of “get the players here, quarantine them, test them every other day (or more), and re-quarantine protocol breakers” has worked tremendously.
Guess what Major League Baseball hasn’t done.
America’s Pastime Is Dying
If you’re familiar with baseball, you probably know about Spring Training. If you don’t, it’s when every team in MLB goes to either Arizona or Florida in February and March to have tryouts and preseason games. Each team has a dedicated facility that they use every year. When stay-at-home orders began sprouting up across the union, sports media and team executives alike began tossing around ideas on how to ensure the first pitch of the 2020 season would come on schedule. The baseball world was considering a bubble a la NBA as early as the first week of April (well before any other league actually thought of and implemented their own bubble). The baseball bubble would have games “primarily at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and at the 10 spring training sites in the Phoenix area.” (Shaikin, 2020) But it never happened. And despite flareups within several teams prior to the “Summer Camp” workouts leading up to Opening Day, MLB went forward with their plan to hold games at all 30 home parks (except for the Blue Jays, who were denied permission from the Canadian government) rather than attempt a bubble like every other league. And the façade quickly cracked.
On July 27th, just five days into the shortened season (oh yeah, there’s only 60 games this year, that’s a whole different story), 11 players on the Miami Marlins tested positive. As of now, the Marlins next two games with the Orioles and the Phillies (the Marlins’ weekend opponent) games with the Yankees are postponed until further testing and replacement players can be retrieved. It’s the first incident of the season, and it certainly won’t be the last. While there is still plenty of time for things to go wrong in the other leagues, it can’t be denied that they have been holding practices and games in their respective bubbles for several weeks now with almost no issues, and it took one series for two baseball teams to be shut down until further notice.
Going Forward
While the future looks grim for Major League Baseball, given the near immediate failure of their health protocols and the audacity that was the negotiations between owners and the MLB Players Association leading up to the season, there is a silver lining. The bubble method that was quickly dismissed has in fact proved feasible, and if the owners and Commissioner Rob Manfred at quickly, establishing a bubble of their own in Phoenix may still be possible. But if it’s going to happen, it needs to happen now. Every day, every game under these protocols is a huge risk, and I believe that without drastic changes baseball will go away in 2020 just as quickly as it arrived.
Thank you for reading my first article in well over half a year. If you enjoyed it, please follow me on Twitter @LTS_tweets or subscribe to get email notifications. Also, please wash your hands, wear a mask, and social distance whenever possible. God knows this may be the best chance the Rockies and Angels have at a deep playoff runs in a long time, I don’t want them to be cut short.
References
AJMC Staff. (2020, July 3). A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020. Retrieved from AJMC: https://www.ajmc.com/focus-of-the-week/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020
Carlisle, J. (2020, June 27). Inside the MLS bubble: What players, teams can expect in Orlando. Retrieved from ESPN: https://www.espn.com/soccer/major-league-soccer/story/4122601/inside-the-mls-bubble-what-playersteams-can-expect-in-orlando
Johns Hopkins University. (2020, July 27). Mortality Analyses. Retrieved from Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Kim, A., & Close, D. (2020, July 21). NBA announces zero positive Covid-19 test results after over a week inside the Disney bubble. Retrieved from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/21/us/nba-coronavirus-tests-spt-trnd/index.html
Ministry of Health. (2020, July 27). COVID-19 – current cases. Retrieved from New Zealand Ministry of Health: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases
MLB. (2020, March 13). Spring Training operations suspended. Retrieved from MLB.com: https://www.mlb.com/press-release/press-release-spring-training-operations-suspended
Passan, J. (2020, July 27). Twitter. Retrieved from Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1287762092418899968
Premier League. (2020, July 27). Statement on results of COVID-19 tests. Retrieved from Premier League: https://www.premierleague.com/news/1670563
Rosen, D. (2020, July 24). NHL hub cities of Edmonton, Toronto ready for Stanley Cup Qualifiers. Retrieved from NHL.com: https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-gives-details-on-life-in-hub-cities-for-return-to-play/c-317602970
Schwartz, N. (2020, July 4). See the NBA’s preseason scrimmage schedule in the bubble. Retrieved from USA Today: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2020/07/nba-bubble-preseason-scrimmage-schedule
Shaikin, B. (2020, April 7). Plan to launch MLB season in a coronavirus-free Arizona bubble isn’t airtight. Retrieved from The Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-04-07/launch-mlb-season-coronavirus-free-arizona-bubble-isnt-airtight
Tong-Hyung, K. (2020, June 30). Korean Baseball Organization will allow fans in stands — but with restrictions like sitting a seat apart and no excessive cheering. Retrieved from Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/ct-kbo-fans-allowed-20200630-m4xsd5w4lrhcvjn3uipvojmeie-story.html
Wikipedia. (2020, July 27). 2020 MLB Season. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Major_League_Baseball_season
Wikipedia. (2020, July 27). Vietnam War. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
Young, R. (2020, March 11). Sources: Jazz center Rudy Gobert tests positive for coronavirus. Retrieved from ESPN: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28887057/jazz-center-rudy-gobert-tests-positive-coronavirus
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