Tim Cowlishaw: Major U.S. team sports will be searching for the path back to playing for a while

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DALLAS — It’s a new month, a new time with segments of society opening or at least being allowed to in Texas and a number of others. It’s a time to ponder — with a real attempt to be positive here, and let’s see if that lasts for 900 words — the return of professional team sports and when that might happen.

We already know that NASCAR has races scheduled this month and that the PGA Tour is set to return at Colonial in mid-June. Obviously there is a certain amount of distancing that is not only possible but mandatory with those sports. How far away can MLB and the NBA and the NHL be from our big screens?

Each league is kicking around plans that are discussed more on social media than in owners meetings that could get things implemented. It appears we are still too far away from laying things out in that manner when you are talking about putting roughly 450 NBA players or 600 hockey players or 1,000 major leaguers (rosters will be expanded) back to work.

I have to say that one of baseball’s latest ideas which is simply to have teams play games in their major league cities without fans makes the most sense. Or it at least is the winner of the “least impossible” battle these leagues are waging.

You check out the latest from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst on the NBA and its thoughts on putting players, coaches, staff, TV personnel in a “bubble” possibly at Disney World in Orlando. Beyond the incredible logistical nightmare of carving out a safe space even for the most bare-bones operation one can imagine, the NBA keeps bumping up against the same wall as the NHL does in its similar four-city idea to quarantine players.

Nothing works unless players and personnel are tested and tested repeatedly. That means asymptomatic people being given tests on a regular basis. How does that fly when testing for the rest of the country, even for those who are sick and showing signs of the coronavirus, remains difficult to administer or unavailable?

That’s a hard sell, that we need our sports so badly that we are testing people almost certainly not sick while ignoring others or creating long waiting lines for those that are sick around the country.

That’s a big issue and that’s just one.

If you can somehow clear the testing hurdle, what do you do with “bubble” players when they sustain serious injuries? Do they go to hospitals? Do you bring the hospital care to them? What about players or coaches or staff whose wives go into labor? Do they visit the hospital? Are they not allowed to be there for the birth of their kids? And, by the way, are we sure everyone in the league is up for this lengthy quarantine that may fall well short of five-star hotel room service?

We haven’t even addressed the fact that the NHL has over 300 European players. It may be an ordeal just getting them back into the country. NBA and NHL players already received 80% of their salary for this past season. Are the players on teams not likely to make the playoffs even coming?

Some of these questions can be resolved by a more massive availability of tests, but that’s something that has not happened in this country.

As for MLB playing in New York and Los Angeles and all points in between, I think it’s at least more realistic to devise a plan in which players are living at home in their normal environment. That, of course, comes with all the risks that we know exist where social distancing is being reduced as we speak. Whether the “second wave” of the virus is as serious as some project, it’s a safe bet that with anything approaching extensive testing, a number of players are going to test positive.

Can we reach a point where we just accept that? That Player A is out with the virus and will be isolating for 10 days or two weeks but the rest of his team gets tested and keeps playing? Can we do that without testing every player from every opposing team that has been in Player A’s vicinity the past week to 10 days?

If I have failed to reassure you that games are just around the corner, it’s not for lack of trying. I want one of these approaches to sound doable. But seeing what South Korea has — baseball returning next week — and simply “wanting” it here doesn’t accomplish much. That country has provided a model for how a democratic society defeats the virus.

You don’t have to watch or read the news for more than 30 seconds a day to know that has not happened here and won’t take place anytime soon.

Maybe on June 1 we will feel better about these possibilities than we do on May 1. In the meantime, enjoy a little NASCAR and pretend that’s your go-to sport even if it isn’t. It’s the only one on the immediate horizon until we get a few golfers knocking the ball around in Fort Worth in six weeks.

If team sports are going to take a little longer, look on the bright side. There’s still a chance that the busiest autumn in sports history is right around the corner.

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