Phillies’ Growing COVID-19 Outbreak Proves How Abnormal This Season Will Be

More Phillies are infected. On Monday, the tally of coronavirus-infected team employees climbed to 12 after news broke late last week that eight members of the club have the virus. The breakdown: eight players and four staff members have tested positive. An unknown amount of family members are also infected. The good news, no Phillies employee has been hospitalized, although a few are reportedly battling symptoms.

Yes, the Phillies outbreak is a mess, not just for the team, but for all of Major League Baseball. It shows us how vulnerable a team is. How unstable it is. How an outbreak shuts everything down in a snap and breeds uncertainty and fear. Last week, the Phillies shut down its Clearwater, Fla. facility, where some players had been training amid the pandemic. A panic ensued with MLB shutting down all 30 spring-training sites in Florida and Arizona, states that have seen a recent spike in coronavirus cases, and directing that they undergo a cleansing and sanitizing.

Here’s the plot twist… a miracle happened. The Major League Baseball Players Association has agreed to report to training camps by July 1 and play a 60-game season, but is still discussing health-and safety protocols with the league. It seems like time celebrate. There will be a 2020 baseball season. But for the Phillies, they have eight days to gain control of an outbreak while beginning to prepare for a baseball season — yes, that’s eight days. Even prior to the Clearwater outbreak, the Phillies planned to head north and train at Citizens Bank Park, their youth academy at nearby FDR Park, and their triple-A Lehigh Valley ballpark, according to sources.

Meanwhile, the Phillies outbreak illustrates the reality of not just sports but our world — the challenges, the fears, the stopping and restarting and stopping again. It also illustrates how the 2020 season is not a season — it’s an experiment. Will the 60-game season be played to completion? Hopefully. Will there be a World Series? Who knows. What happens if there’s another outbreak on another team or teams? Does the season go on pause? Does it cancelled? There are no answers.

For weeks, the MLBPA and the owners squabbled over the length of the season. The owners wanted a 50- to 60-game schedule, the players wanted more with an expanded postseason. When it was announced the season would be a 60-game schedule with no expanded playoffs, critics scoffed, saying that a baseball season with only a couple months worth of games is a farce. But the way it looks now, MLB will be lucky to play 60 and even luckier to get to World Series, considering the likelihood of another outbreak and a looming second wave of the virus.

Asked Friday whether the Phillies’ outbreak makes it less likely that baseball will be played in 2020, managing partner John Middleton called it the “$64,000 question.” The $64,000 question has been answered. There will be baseball, amid the Phillies outbreak… Well, we think it will be played.