A TV cameraman films in the empty stadium as a part of precaution against the new coronavirus during … [+]
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Baseball fans and the rest of the world have been anxiously watching the curve. There’s the global curve, which breaks into hundreds of country curves, which break into city and county curves. These curves are, of course, the infection, hospitalization and death rates of Covid-19, which results from the novel coronavirus. Lately, many of these curves seem to have peaked and started to head back down, bringing hopes that schools, businesses, and, one day, Major League Baseball, could reopen to players and fans. There is a trouble with the curve, however: the possibility of a second wave.
Unlike a curveball, there is no particular reason for the coronavirus curve to continue to drop if society reopens. Its current path is a result of current practices, namely social distancing and other precautions like hand washing and face covering. If tomorrow, we all went back to restaurants, cafes and stadiums, the curve would spike again, and we would set the clock back by weeks.
While Rob Manfred and other public-facing MLB officials continue to express hope bordering on certainty that baseball will return, the possibility of there being fans seems optimistic, given the possibility of a second wave.
California, which has fared better than most states in keeping its curve flat, has begun to talk about possibly opening up commercial establishments in a limited manner – imagine a restaurant with most of the tables removed or a bar with people attempting to flirt at a distance. These are establishments that might have a usual capacity of fifty to a hundred. A baseball stadium has a capacity in the tens of thousands. It’s fun to imagine a baseball stadium with, say, a few hundred people – at least there would be people to catch the foul balls – but if our limits require that sort of distancing anyway, it’s likely that MLB would prefer to restrict games to one or two regions (likely Florida and Arizona).
The sad truth is that it’s unlikely we will be able to go from “off” to “on” in a day or even a month. Government leaders and individuals will have to figure out what it means to open society gradually, such that new flare ups don’t overtax the hospital system, and regional shutdowns can still be employed to deal with localized outbreaks. Until we have a vaccine or an effective treatment, that’s likely the world we are stuck with, provided our elected officials are acting responsibly.
How, then, could we countenance a stadium with forty thousand fans sharing elbow rests, passing beers to one another and using the same bathrooms? Just one team opening to full capacity could easily cause a Covid-19 outbreak in its city, which could spread from there.
We are learning to live with new normals these days, and MLB has held on to the hope that the old normal will return. Millions of fans want it and billions in revenue are at stake. Season ticket buyers are asking about refunds, and teams are telling them that they still may get something like what they paid for. It’s not yet May, and what is April for if not optimism around baseball, no matter the circumstances.
However, no one, not Rob Manfred, Mike Trout or Gerrit Cole, can change the fact that while the curve is dropping now, it only takes one poorly placed spectator to make it rise again.