To say I’m invested in sports would be a radical understatement. They’re my livelihood. I’m worried about what could happen if stadiums stay dark.
But that doesn’t mean I support risking lives to bring them back.
It certainly doesn’t mean I’d vouch for “Bubble Baseball.” Or, for that matter, Bubble Basketball, Bubble Football or Bubble Hockey (although it’s a great bar game).
It feels wrong, almost depraved, to be prioritizing sports when more than 12,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in the second week of April. More than 29,000 have died in a span of eight weeks.
We have no national testing, no vaccine, no treatment. We don’t know where the next hot spot might arise, or if opening a certain sector that has been practicing good pandemic habits will cause a flare-up.
So how can we possibly justify convenient, rapid, repeated testing of athletes and team employees in a bubble city? Or in light of the story of the Virginia nursing home where 46 residents died amid a lack of adequate testing?
As reported in The New York Times, “Virginia had only about 300 test kits available in mid-March … (and to get one) residents of long-term care facilities first needed to test negative for the flu and other respiratory viruses.”
The state of Virginia had 300 test kits available a month ago, but we’re going to line up, say, the Baltimore Orioles and all their “essential” personnel and test them daily or weekly so we can play ball?
“I think, actually, this is probably the dumbest thing I’ve heard Major League Baseball put out in public,” ex-Pirates star Andy Van Slyke told 93.7 The Fan.
The bubble city idea calls for creating a biosphere situation — think Sandy Cheeks in “SpongeBob SquarePants” — where critical personnel would be flown out (that sounds like a good idea) and cloistered for several months. They would travel only between the designated hotel and playing facilities.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease expert and member of the White House’s COVID-19 task force, says if games are going to return anytime soon, they would have to be played in isolation.
“Put (the essential personnel) in big hotels … keep them very well surveilled and have them tested every week,” Fauci told Snapchat’s Peter Hamby. “Make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family, and just let them play the season out.”
That might well be the most realistic scenario for sports to return, but that doesn’t mean it’s all that realistic. Or sensible. Or defensible.
Among the details discussed: players sitting apart in the stands for social distancing (never mind the whole batter/catcher thing; robot umps; cut pay; and seven-inning doubleheaders in the blazing Arizona heat.
What, no team-embroidered hazmat suits?
Not that I’m ruling this out, mind you. Big money backed by federal resolve tends to make things happen. If WWE can finagle its way into an “essential” service designation in Florida, then bubble baseball surely could finagle its way to Phoenix.
Television rights holders are circling like hungry hyenas, undoubtedly willing to put the most freakish form of baseball before a sequestered, sports-famished public, if that’s what it takes.
I’m guessing even a version devoid of stars could be packaged and sold — and make no mistake, some stars aren’t exactly frothing at the notion of massive paycuts and life under “surveillance” far from their families.
The best player in the sport basically laughed at the idea.
“We want to get back as soon as we can, but obviously it’s got to be realistic,” Mike Trout told NBC Sports’ Lunch Talk Live. “It can’t be sitting in our hotel rooms, just going from the field to the hotel room and not being able to do anything. I think that’s pretty crazy.”
He added, “What are you gonna do with family members? My wife is pregnant. What am I gonna do when she goes into labor?”
Dodgers star Clayton Kershaw was more pointed, telling SportsNet LA, “I’m just not going to do it.”
That’s pretty clear, although Kershaw also said it’s “great” that folks are getting creative. I agree. Creativity is a prerequisite here, because sports will have to return in different forms at first.
And they will return, though now just isn’t the time.
People are dying.
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