Experts doubt MLB can emulate Bundesliga’s safe, successful return
One season is ending, another is beginning, and the intersection of the two — Major League Baseball and Bundesliga soccer — shows how risky it is to restart sports in the United States right now.
On Saturday, Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen will meet in the German Cup final in Berlin, capping a successful six-week schedule. Across the Atlantic Ocean, all over North America, MLB will begin summer camp during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The models for the two are similar in that, unlike the NBA, they’re operating outside of a bubble, travelling between cities and having players, coaches and staff live at home.
But here’s a key difference: Germany’s response to the pandemic was much more successful — and much more proactive — than that taken by the U.S. It enabled the Bundesliga, the country’s top soccer league, to resume in mid-may and handle sporadic coronavirus cases. Baseball, on the other hand, is about to make a similar attempt in a much different environment.
The United States topped 50,000 new daily cases for the first time on Wednesday. That was more than a fourth of Germany’s total cases to date. Germany has had around 9,000 coronavirus deaths, and by mid-may, when soccer returned, it had almost completely flattened the curve.
“Germany was able to pull it off, but we’re not Germany. Many of the markets that MLB wants to play in don’t look like Germany,” said Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University. “The baseline risk is much higher. So unfortunately, because of our response to COVID -19, sports leagues need stricter return plans, and I don’t know that MLB has really wrestled with that yet.”
Both the MLB and Bundesliga plans hinge on players, coaches and staff, and their families, being cautious and smart away from team facilities. That’s the reality of not playing inside a bubble, which the NBA will use in Florida to negate travel and limit exposure to the outside world. But MLB and the Bundesliga took near-opposite approaches for regulating off-site behaviour.
MLB’S 101-page operations manual dedicated one paragraph to it, urging individuals to “exercise care,” then leaving each team to craft and enforce its own policy. Four players, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss a sensitive topic, said this is MLB’S way of avoiding responsibility should an outbreak occur.
“Without guidelines, they can push blame to teams or individuals if cases spike in a clubhouse,” said one player, who opposed a bubble format and acknowledged that the protocol was agreed upon by MLB and the players’ union. “Maybe it was the Uber driver’s fault, the delivery guy, the player was reckless. Who knows?”
“The protocols were a product of a negotiation with the Players Association,” an MLB spokesperson said in a statement to The Washington Post. “If the players want more restrictive protocols when they’re not at work, they should speak to their union. We remain willing to make adjustments to the protocols based on the concerns of our players and staff or recommendations from our medical advisers.”
The Bundesliga went the other way, giving detailed instructions for how to best act at home. A 50page document, dedicated solely to health and safety protocols, often describes these measures as “rules.”
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Included on that list is a note to “not shake out unclean laundry and avoid direct contact between skin and laundry with soiled fabric.” And that is just a sliver of the Bundesliga’s effort to limit the virus’s spread.
The Bundesliga held matches in empty stadiums, like baseball plans to, and clubs played a maximum twice a week, much less frequently than MLB’S tentative schedule of 60 games in 66 days. That helped limit travel and the risks of shuttling between cities.
Germany was able to pull it off, but we’re not Germany. Many of the markets that MLB wants to play in don’t look like Germany.
In turn, the Bundesliga was able to weather players testing positive, including 10 in one of its initial rounds. The six-week return consisted of 36 clubs across the federation’s top two divisions.
“In the U.S., with baseball, the combination of the honour code and the current spike is really dangerous,” said Anne Liu, an infectious-disease physician at Stanford Health Care. She explained that, with a new wave of cases, MLB players could use more guidance away from the facilities, not much less than what the Bundesliga provided in May.
This, Liu added, mirrors the contrast between the U.S. and German responses to the pandemic. In America, the virus was quickly politicized and the onus placed on state governments to lead. There’s an ongoing debate on whether mask mandates and business lockdowns are violations of civil liberties or necessary public health measures. This week, a handful of states slowed or reversed reopening measures because of recent case spikes.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, a former scientist, united the country by presenting safety measures — such as mask-wearing and social distancing — in scientific terms. Germany’s 16 states had their own regulations, and as a whole, they never shut down like those in the U.S. But they controlled the virus with early testing and contact tracing, a strong public health infrastructure and a trust in government, according to epidemiologists and reports chronicling their success in the last few months.
Since the Bundesliga was the first league to return, it provided a template for how to play outside of a bubble. But the trickiest element there is environmental influences.
Baseball’s plan, while similar, is less detailed in critical areas, according to public health experts, and set to unfold where the virus is still rampant