Giants to allow fans to submit cutouts for home games

All-Star game in LA to need rescheduling

After three straight years of growing apathy and shrinking attendance, the San Francisco Giants can guarantee fans will be glued to their seats this season.

It’ll just have to be in the form of cutouts.

Fans won’t be allowed to attend games at Oracle Park due to the coronavirus pandemic, so the Giants launched “Giants Fan Cutout Program,” which encourages fans to submit pictures of themselves to be displayed in the stands.

The Giants sent notice to their season ticket holders Thursday introducing the program that “allows you to be at Oracle Park even when you’re home watching the game” during the shortened 60-game season that begins late next month.

The cutouts will be provided at no cost for season ticket holders who are choosing to receive account credit toward next season. All other fans can participate in the cutout program by paying $99. There will be guidelines about which types of photos will be permissible.

A number of European and Asian soccer teams are using the same kind of cutout program as the Giants for their fans, with mixed results. While seeing the likenesses of upwards of 20,000 fans in the stands has somewhat normalized their no-fan experiences, there have been some issues.

English soccer club Leeds United was forced to apologize after a cutout of Osama bin Laden in a seat appeared on a telecast. Meanwhile, a South Korean soccer team also apologized after including (fully clothed) sex dolls among the fans’ cutouts.

ALL-STAR GAME: The fans of Los Angeles have waited 40 years for baseball’s All-Star Game. That wait will go on for at least another two years, but the game will return to Dodger Stadium for the first time since 1980.

The Dodgers had been scheduled to play host to the All-Star Game July 14, but the start of the 2020 season has been delayed to July 23 because of the coronavirus outbreak. As Major League

Baseball officials complete the 2020 schedule, they also are working on a new date for a Dodger Stadium All-Star Game.

The 2021 game is set for Atlanta. The only future all-star games awarded in MLB: Atlanta next year, and Philadelphia in 2026, the latter to commemorate the 250th anniversary of American independence.

BLUE JAYS: Less than a week before Major League baseball teams resume training on July 1, the Toronto Blue Jays still haven’t been able to tell their players where to show up.

“Sometime over the weekend, we’ll get them on their way and tell them where to report,” Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro said on a conference call Friday.

After spending weeks working on a “dual scenario” for their spring training site in Dunedin, Florida, and Rogers Centre in Toronto, a recent spike in coronavirus cases in Florida prompted the Blue Jays to petition the Canadian government to let players cross the closed U.S.-Canada border to safely prepare for the upcoming season.

“As the condition in Florida got worse and the spike happened … we raised the possibility of conducting our training in Toronto,” Shapiro said. “It just seemed like that was a safer alternative.”

Shapiro said the Blue Jays did not consider playing in nearby Buffalo, New York, home of their Triple-A affiliate. He also said a prospective plan to share Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, with the Rays was scrapped.