Let’s call 3 strikes on outof-state club ball travel

CLUB BALL teams travel out of New Mexico into neighboring states, Arizona and Texas, where COVID-19 numbers are experiencing alarming increases per every metric — cases, positivity rates, hospitalizations and deaths. Driving into Texas, a state that initiated reopening while COVID-19 numbers were still rising, follows the same analogy posed by a leading medical expert regarding Texas’ ill-advised move, “That’s like leaning into a left jab.”

Jim Dixon (“Youth baseball coaches dispute virus rumor,” Albuquerque Journal, July 1) says the kids “want” to play. All of us “want” to do something — have graduation, go swimming, play Little League, get married, have a long-awaited surgery — but COVID-19 slammed reality into our faces and all of those “wants” were lost or put on a long hold. I did not see M.D. after Dixon’s or Mike McDermott’s names when writer Steve Virgen quoted them as saying it’s safe to play baseball. Ignoring reality does not make it safe, nor make the virus go away. Hear that, President Trump?

Dixon says that having baseball events in New Mexico would save players’ parents thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars? Wow! Thank God for Little League baseball, where kids can play on quality fields with quality coaches and quality umpires for less than $200. Little League has a lot of players who “want” to play baseball, but reality says not now.

Club baseball, in my opinion, is for the most part a business that in many cases is first about money and not the players. How can you take seriously any baseball program that has no home base, no fields of its own, and is willing to compromise public health?

Hopefully these neighboring states will also face reality and prevent these club ball teams who “want” to play baseball from driving into “Harm’s Way, Texas” or “Take a Risk, Arizona.” Obviously, common sense is not very common.

TERRY DOLAN Albuquerque