Return plans can’t be enforced for pros
Athletes unlikely to follow stringent rules put in place to satisfy health officials
Moments after Marko Grujic scored a goal for Hertha Berlin on the weekend, his teammate Dedryck Boyata wrapped his hands around Grujic’s head in what sure looked like a celebratory embrace.
Boyata moved in and held his face close, in what sure looked like a celebratory kiss. He would later say that he was merely providing tactical advice to his teammate. Weird time for that bit of urgent business, but perhaps Boyata just didn’t want to forget to impart his wisdom later.
Whatever the reasons for it, the post-goal clench was a clear flouting of the physical distancing restrictions that the Bundesliga, Germany’s top soccer flight, put in place before its return to action on Saturday (goal celebrations were to be solitary).
And given that it happened in the most obvious way possible, with cameras trained on the players after a goal, it underscores how difficult it will be for professional leagues to get their athletes to fully abide with the reams of restrictions and guidelines presently being bandied about as they move toward a resumption of their businesses. If players are going to come in close celebratory contact with one another even with everyone watching, what’s going to happen on the training ground or in the locker-room or on the team bus, when no eyes are trained on them?
In most respects, the experience in Germany was encouraging for the hockey, basketball, soccer and baseball leagues that are plotting their returns on this continent. Bundesliga players weren’t collapsing all over the field with muscle strains and cramps brought on by months of relative inactivity, and matches in front of empty stands were a fair approximation of matches played in crowded stadiums, in the athletic if not atmospheric sense.
But it’s all the other stuff that remains a puzzle. With the caveat that all leagues have been reluctant to publicly endorse any one plan while details are still be worked out, the leading contenders among the proposals would see the NHL, NBA and MLS try to limit the exposure of their players and staff by holding their events in a few cities, which would also limit the number of outside workers who would come into contact with them. Earlier concepts of strict quarantine bubbles have given way to the realization that such a thing would be impossible to enforce. Instead, there is hope that athletes would be smart enough to limit their contacts. Teams will mention Rudy Gobert a lot.
Major League Baseball is the outlier in that it would try to play in all its normal parks, although given that MLB also seems to want to fundamentally alter its financial agreement with its players as part of that plan, it now seems the least likely of any of the leagues to pull off an agreement in time to save a 2020 season.
The constant among any of the floated proposals is that they would expect players to be frequently tested for COVID-19, and to respect strict physical distancing measures at all times. There is talk of building auxiliary locker-room space in stadiums so that stalls could be six feet apart, of adding extra transportation so that players wouldn’t have to sit next to one another on planes and buses, and of cutting the number of people who could sit on a bench or in a dugout. The details range from the obvious, such as banning buffet dinners and hot tubs, to the strangely granular, such as removing a baseball from play once it had been hit and then fielded. MLB’S proposal, as reported, essentially imagines the baseballs themselves as disease vectors. Grab your glove and toss around the ol’ coronavirus pellets.
Even if players sign off on all of this stuff in theory, adherence to the rules is going to be difficult for simple reasons of human nature. Locker stalls can be spaced out, but it would be impossible for dozens of large humans to move around such a space while staying six feet apart at all times. Anyone who has been to a grocery store in recent weeks knows that, even with the best of intentions, those imaginary bubbles are easily and often pierced.
Similarly, a league could try to impose restrictions on the sharing of equipment — personalized basketballs for warm-ups! — but that’s going to feel a little pointless when, minutes later, all the same players are bumping into each other and chasing the same ball.
Baseball players could be prohibited from tossing a ball around the infield in between at-bats, but then immediately toss a ball around the infield to execute a double-play.
Hockey players could take measures to carefully avoid each other off the ice, and then a goalcrease scrum involving six players and at least one face-wash would happen several dozen times a game.
And if all of this is taking place amid an environment of frequent COVID-19 testing, athletes are going to be naturally wondering why they have to be quite so concerned about interacting with one another. What would the spacing at a typical grocery store look like if all the patrons were being repeatedly told that they had tested negative for the coronavirus?
The strict measures that the leagues are proposing are intended to secure the blessing of the health authorities that will allow games to take place. They are protocols that will undoubtedly look robust on paper. Whether they actually happen in practice is another matter.