Shut it Down
The combination of sports and COVID is not a good one. MLS is launching the restart of their season tonight with one team withdrawing from their tournament because of positive COVID tests. Ohio State and UNC became the latest schools to pause their preseasons due to the virus. The Ivy League announced that all sports are postponed until at least January 1st. Stanford announced that it will permanently stop playing 11 varsity sports after this season (if there is a season).
In America just over 62,000 people tested positive for the virus today. That’s a record, and more than double the worst numbers from April, when New York was on fire. (there were 692 positives in NYS today). Those of us who live in NYC learned today that the grim reality is the best case scenario for our kids this fall is going to school 50% of the time, and for most of us it will be 33% because it is impossible to put a lot of kids in a building if they need to be six-feet apart.
In short, the virus is kicking our ass right now and if we want to get back to any semblance of normalcy, we have to bring it under control. In New York, that was accomplished by shutting almost everything down for two months, and then gradually reopening only parts of the state at first. New York City didn’t even start to reopen until the beginning of June and we are still a full stage behind the rest of the state and not allowing indoor dining.
New York has made amazing progress, but it was at a horrific price. We can’t let this virus come back and it’s time that someone calls stop on MLB’s resumption plans. New York State has a quarantine for travelers from lots of states, but most importantly baseball-wise, from Florida and Georgia. That means that players from Atlanta, Tampa, and Miami should not be allowed into the state and the Yankees and Mets, should not be allowed back into the state if they travel to those places, before quarantining for 14 days.
And New York is not alone. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania have similar orders, so teams visiting the Red Sox and Phillies from those states and the Red Sox and Phillies, when they return from those states, should be quarantined. I haven’t even mentioned Canada, which has another set of rules.
MLB simply can’t conduct a season with teams traveling between COVID hot zones and non-hot zones in this environment. It kills me to say this, but the current plan for the season has to be abandoned. Find a place for a bubble and maybe you get a shortened season in, but trying to pull off a season right now is criminally negligent.