For First Time In 152 Year History There Will Be No Pro Baseball To Start Summer

Summer. It’s here. When the clock struck midnight on June 19th and slowly rolled over to the 20th, most of the northern hemisphere on this mortal coil called earth, began the Summer Solstice — the longest day and the shortest night of the calendar year.

Many might say it doesn’t feel like that right now. That this is more of a dark time than light. On the first day of summer a global pandemic and protests over social justice rock the planet. People have largely been sequestered in their homes to try and “flatten the curve” as a novel coronavirus lays waste to jobs and economies.

The effect of the pandemic has also done something that two World Wars, other pandemics, and social upheaval could not. It has stopped professional baseball from being played on the first day of summer in its entire history.

Joe Sheehan of SI Now and formerly of Baseball Prospectus seems to be the first to have noted the momentous occasion hours before the calendar flipped.

Think about that. Not since a group of attorneys got together in Cincinnati and gave Harry Wright of the Red Stockings money to begin paying players has there been a summer that started without some form of professional baseball in the U.S.

Roger Kahn wrote a seminal non-fiction book in 1972 called the Boys Of Summer that recounted his covering the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune up to 1955. Don Henley of the rock band The Eagles, released a smash hit in 1984 of the same name. The boys of summer have been synonymous with baseball.

And yet here is the start of summer. Here we are without them.

To place this in perspective, there have been 152 years of professional baseball in America. Since then, no summer has begun without it in place. That’s 55,517 days, for those of you counting at home.

That doesn’t mean that Major League Baseball has never been at a stop when summer began. The last time that occurred was during the 1981 strike that started on June 12 and lasted 713 games. But that was MLB. Minor League Baseball and independent league pro ball continued to be played.

Think about this: Baseball was played professionally through World War I. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, and America entered World War II, there was serious talk about shutting down Major League Baseball for the 1942 season as part of the Baseball Winter Meetings held on the day after the Japanese attack. Then commissioner Kenesaw “Mountain” Landis wrote president, Franklin Roosevelt asking what MLB should do.

“If you believe we ought to close down for the duration of the war, we are ready to do so immediately,” Landis wrote. “If you feel we ought to continue, we would be delighted to do so. We await your order.”

On January 15, 1942, Roosevelt penned what has been called the “Green Light Letter” in which he said, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.”

Baseball also was played professionally during the pandemic of 1918-19 with many players wearing masks. But that didn’t stop players from avoiding what was then called the “Spanish Flu.”

Professional ballplayers that died as part of the 1918-19 pandemic included Cy Swain, a minor leaguer from 1904 to 1914 who slugged 39 home runs in 1913; Larry Chappell, a big-league outfielder for the White Sox, Indians and Boston Braves between 1913 and 1917; catcher Leo McGraw, a minor leaguer between 1910 and 1916; catcher Harry Glenn, a minor leaguer from 1910 to 1918 who spent time with the 1915 Cardinals; minor league pitcher Dave Roth, who played between 1912 and 1916; and minor league pitcher Harry Acton, who played in 1917.

So, it seems appropriate to create a snapshot of this day in history so that it’s remembered in the coming years. On the first day of summer in 2020:

• Rob Manfred is the commissioner of Major League Baseball with Tony Clark his counterpart as the executive director of the MLB Players Association.
• The sides are gripped in a labor war over how to start a pandemic-shortened season with proper safety precautions.
• The sides are at loggerheads over not just the health and safety protocols, but the economics. On June 20, the league’s 30 owners are preparing to accept or reject a counteroffer for a 70 game season by the players after the league proposed a 60 game season on Tuesday, June 16.
• If the owners reject the offer, Manfred will have the right to unilaterally implement a season length of his choosing as long as players receive 100% of their pro-rata pay.
• Should the unilateral season be imposed, the likelihood of a grievance will be filed in which an arbitrator could award as much as $1 billion to one of the sides that he rules in favor of.
• On the eve of summer, all spring training facilities in Arizona and Flordia had been shut down after at least 12 major-league players and staff members test positive for COVID-19. As part of the shutdown, the league prepares to “deep clean” all facilities, and all players and staff are set to undergo testing before they will be allowed to open.
• The number of players and staff that have tested positive increase on the first day of summer 2020 when it is reported that members of the Yankees organization have been hit:

• While it has not been announced uniformly across all leagues within it, on the first day of summer it is largely believed that Minor League Baseball will have no 2020 season due to the pandemic.
• Finally, while Major League Baseball may implement a schedule, players will report to spring training, and a season may get underway, as the first day of summer of 2020 begins there are beliefs that due to the novel coronavirus the postseason may need to be canceled at some point. The last time that happened was 1994 due to a player strike.