As baseball replaces its usual marathon with a 60-game sprint during a pandemic, Jeff Passan explains what it could look like on — and off — the diamond.
The weirdest year in Major League Baseball history starts Thursday night. The game that fancies its season a marathon will engage in an outright sprint during the 2020 MLB season. The sport that night after night packs fans into stadiums will play with no crowds. Amid a global pandemic, in a country where the coronavirus continues to spread with impunity, baseball will imbibe a confusing cocktail of uncertainty, skepticism and hope, fully embracing a show-must-go-on mentality.
Around the sport, there is pride that it reached the point where a season is reality and unease about what playing that season means. The disquietude is a definitional feature of baseball in 2020, omnipresent and threatening. As quickly as it starts, it could end.
And for a game so about control — controlling of pitches, of pace, of swings, of emotions — that truth is disaffecting. Inside baseball, there are bulls and bears, believers and cynics, optimists and pessimists. Most people, though, from the clubhouse to the front office and everywhere in between, find themselves conflicted, wanting success, fearing otherwise.
„I’ve gone back and forth,“ one National League general manager said this week. „I think it’s the right thing to try this. I came in concerned with a rash of positives in the industry. Now I’m just more concerned with the nation. How long can you continue a business that’s purely a diversion when a nation is increasingly in turmoil?“
The question was rhetorical because the answer isn’t particularly satisfying: You just can. Once the principals convinced themselves that baseball’s return was important — for the sake of the teams, owners and players, for the fans, for the employees, for the present and future of the sport — this moment was always the endgame. It was simply a matter of whether anything fundamental would get in its way. Nothing has. And here we are, Opening Day nigh, still with questions, 20 of which are pertinent and do have answers that aren’t satisfactory to some but are the foundation upon which this season, however long it lasts, will be built.
So, they’re actually gonna do this, huh?
Yup. At 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci will throw out the first pitch at Nationals Park, and soon thereafter, Max Scherzer will fire the first actual pitch of the 2020 season to leadoff hitter DJ LeMahieu as the reigning champion Washington Nationals host the New York Yankees. Three hours later, Clayton Kershaw will face Johnny Cueto as the World Series favorite Los Angeles Dodgers entertain their rivals, the San Francisco Giants. On Friday, the 26 other teams will play their first of 60 games.
Is it gonna work?
Maybe? That’s the only answer, right? It’s not a satisfying one, but come on. It’s 2020. Satisfaction is a luxury nobody can afford anymore.
Brass tacks: In order for MLB to complete this shortened season, it needs to avoid coronavirus outbreaks inside clubhouses and maneuver around potential restrictions enforced by cities and states. It needs players, coaches and others to abide by strict guidelines written not to ensure the safety of those involved — an impossibility — but to make it as safe as possible. It needs, above all, a metric ton of luck, because the proposition — pulling off a season with travel as a pandemic rages around it — is positively herculean.
On its side are a few things. The incentive is strong for players who want to play and do not get paid if they don’t. The game itself is, for the most part, naturally socially distanced. The protocols are fallible but strong. The three-week training camps, which culminated in a flurry of exhibition games, are seen throughout the sport as mostly a success — particularly with the number of positive COVID-19 diagnoses inside major league clubhouses going down.
Are people actually following protocol?
Seemingly. Players say their teams are buying into the use of masks inside of clubhouses and practicing social distancing. Remember, professional athletes, for all of their foibles, rarely reach the highest levels of the game without some semblance of discipline. This is simply a different form of it.
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That said, when more than 1,000 players of differing backgrounds and varying political persuasions get together, unanimity is an impossibility. Younger players will look at veterans and emulate their behavior. One player on a 2019 playoff team, who asked for anonymity so as not to get his teammates in trouble, said he worries that players inside his clubhouse have grown comfortable because of the lack of positive tests and no longer are wearing masks.
„All it takes is one guy for this thing to go sideways,“ he said. „Because testing itself isn’t going to keep us healthy.“
How is testing going?
Baseball is not the NBA, which inside of its Disney World bubble returned zero positive tests this week, but the results have been considered a success. Of more than 2,000 people tested last week, according to the league, six tests came back positive.
The testing itself was bumpy early on — and it’s still far from foolproof. MLB tests its Tier 1 employees — players, coaches, training staff and others seminal to the game’s operations — every other day. Saliva samples are taken mid-afternoon and shipped to the league’s Utah-based lab that day. Typically, the results are returned by around 11 p.m. the next day.
It leaves a not-insignificant window for a COVID-positive person to spread the virus inside of a clubhouse. Say someone is tested on a Tuesday. If he’s carrying the virus, he will spend all day Tuesday and Wednesday around teammates before his result is returned. And that is best-case scenario. Confirming positive tests can take longer, an issue that forced MLB to contract with a second lab at Rutgers University to process some of the 10,000-plus tests it runs each week.
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That test-to-result gap, players said, is why so many are gung-ho about wearing masks and social distancing. They recognize that an outbreak is a threat to their well-being and their team’s success. They’ve either seen teammates or heard stories of opponents who still haven’t practiced with their teams because even though they feel healthy, they continue to test positive — and the protocols state that players cannot return to teams until they’ve tested negative twice. In some cases, even an asymptomatic positive, sources said, can sideline a player for a month.
For players, it’s not a simple binary of sick or not sick. Accordingly, some teams have taken it upon themselves to lease coronavirus testing equipment and purchase their own tests, sources told ESPN. Executives from nine teams confirmed to ESPN that they are using antigen testing, which involves a nasopharyngeal swab, returns a rapid confirmation and costs $30 to $40 per test.
Why do teams need their own machines?
Consider: A player shows up to the stadium and, upon getting his temperature taken, registers at higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. By using a point-of-care machine, teams can get results within 15 minutes — and, if the result is positive, start testing those who have been in contact with the person. Further, sources said, the machine allows them to test employees in other tiers who may not have contact with Tier 1 personnel but still could spread the virus to those who do interact with players, coaches and others.
What are players‘ biggest concerns as they start traveling?
Well, there are the plane rides, the hotel stays, the bus trips — all of the extra points of contact that traveling entails.
