Brewers learn quickly how disruptive virus can be
Home opener postponed after Cardinal positives
Milwaukee Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio lives in the Los Angeles area, one of the scariest hot spots for COVID-19 in the country and therefore is well aware of the dangers coronavirus presents in everyday life.
“I’m very blessed to have my mom, age 92, and even more blessed that she lives next door, but I worry about her every day,” Attanasio said Friday during a Zoom session with Milwaukee reporters.
“I know several others (who contracted the virus). I’ve lost friends and have lost friends’ parents these few months. I’m trying to balance my natural optimism with realism.”
Realism, at least in terms of the world of Major League Baseball, hit home Friday when the Brewers had to postpone their home opener at Miller Park against St. Louis because two Cardinals players tested positive for COVID-19. The team was sequestered in its downtown Milwaukee hotel to undergo rapid testing of the entire travel party as well as contact tracing.
The Brewers-Cardinals game set for Saturday remains on the schedule, with the postponement moved to Sunday as part of a makeup doubleheader. Thanks to the Miller Park roof, which prevents weather postponements, there never has been a twin bill there since the gates opened in 2001. But everything is different in 2020.
This is life in the world of pandemic baseball. You are not only at the mercy of the virus itself but also the health and safety of the team you are playing. Just ask the Philadelphia Phillies. They haven’t played a game since Sunday, when they hosted the Miami Marlins, who suffered an outbreak that infected more than half the team. Despite no positives on their side, the Phillies had to shut down to undergo additional testing.
When MLB announced a greatly reduced 60-game schedule after going dark for 31⁄2 months, league officials knew there was no chance of getting through it without players testing positive. Each of the 30 teams opened with 30-man rosters and placed another 30man group at alternate training sites to serve as replacements if necessary.
Do the math. You’re not going to assemble 1,800 players and make it
through two months, followed by another month of playoffs, without some testing positive for COVID-19. MLB did well during summer camps, with a much lower positive rate (0.05%) than the general public, but that was with players staying put in the cities of their teams and basically only going from their residences to the ballpark.
Once the regular schedule began and teams started traveling, it stood to reason chances would increase of players and/or staff members becoming infected, even with a 113-page operations manual of protocols to follow. Heck, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time can do the trick. You don’t have to do anything untoward.
Unlike the NBA, which put its players in a bubble in Orlando to finish the season, MLB had no such viable option. Too many teams, too many players, too many games to be played. There were early thoughts of splitting the 30 clubs between spring training sites in Arizona and Florida, but if you’ve been paying attention to test results in those states, you know that plan would have been an unmitigated disaster. Also, it’s about 115 degrees every day in Phoenix, so forget that blast furnace.
Still, no one expected an outbreak of the magnitude that decimated Miami’s roster. The Marlins have been claiming players off waivers, signing others and will have to summon a group from their reserve pool as well to continue playing. Once a player goes on the COVID-19 injured list, a team has no idea when he’ll return. Brewers infielder Luis Urías missed the entire three weeks of summer camp after testing positive.
Attanasio received a lesson in the unpredictability of the virus while making plans to travel on his private jet to Chicago for the Brewers’ season opener last Friday against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. His pilot tested negative a few weeks earlier but just to be safe, Attanasio asked him to get tested again.
This time, the result was asymptomatic but positive, so Attanasio canceled the trip, as much as he covets being with his club on opening day. Had he not done so, he, too, might have become infected.
“It’s a challenge in our everyday lives,” he said. “There’s a lot of focus here, obviously, on what goes on, on the field and how we complete a season, but how we get through our everyday lives (matters).”
To say the MLB season has gotten off to a rocky start is to say the Titanic merely stopped to pick up ice. Only league officials know how large a disruption the virus can cause to stop the season and say, “OK, we tried but we’re done.” With the schedules of some teams already messy, drumbeats are louder from those who consider it folly to go forward.
Each day when players arrive at the ballpark, they have their temperatures taken to check for early signs of the coronavirus. But Attanasio took a different kind of temperature while talking to his players Friday. He wanted to get a feel for their collective desire to keep playing despite the early blows delivered by the pandemic.
“We’re all committed, I believe – and I’ve talked to a number of players today – to finishing the season,” Attanasio said. “How we all handle the coronavirus is a challenge, not only for baseball and finishing the season, but it’s a challenge for all of us.”
Attanasio is the first to admit he lives and dies, metaphorically speaking, with the outcome of Brewers games, even while watching from afar on TV on the West Coast. He also noted that everyone has developed a new perspective in this terrible year on what really is and isn’t important in life.
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to try to continue playing baseball, Attanasio concluded. To do so, he said all involved have to be flexible and adaptable, just as folks were when having to work at home and give up inside dining at restaurants.
“(Baseball) is a meaningful part of our everyday lives,” he said. “When we have our games, we can get detached from some of the challenges we face. By the way, I understand that me and my family face a hell of a lot fewer challenges than many people out there.
“Our goal is to play baseball this year and to see this all the way through. I think everyone should realize decisions are made with that context. It’s not necessarily a negative thing when a game is canceled.”
Which is true, as long as postponements and cancellations become the exception, not the norm. In that regard, MLB is already teetering on the edge of a massive precipice.
One of the oldest adages in baseball is that you have to take each season one game at a time. Never has that been more true than in 2020. The BrewersCardinals game Saturday is still on the schedule. Let’s see if it stays that way.