& corona curveball
demic. Major professional sports leagues are struggling to open their respective seasons in the face of increased outbreaks and spikes.
A COVID-19 outbreak at the Phillies spring training camp in Florida caused operations to shut down in Friday as players from other teams, like the Blue Jays and Astros, tested positive for the virus. In response, MLB is shutting down all spring camps to allow facilities to undergo a deep cleaning and disinfecting. As positive cases begin to rise in Florida, both the Yankees and Mets are reportedly considering moving their spring training 2.0 (if a season kicks off ) to New York City, where the outbreak has stabilized.
Even though the looming threat of the virus could dampen MLB’s restart plan, the league’s health and safety protocols are not nearly as much of an issue as player salaries. If MLB cannot finalize a deal to begin the season due to disagreements over revenue, the sport will suffer at the expense of its fanbase.
“You can be sore at the game and the industry for quibbling over billions of dollars when you’re a hard working blue-collar citizen,” Dickey said. “Optically, that looks poor and you might want to boycott the sport for a moment.”
But Dickey does not believe baseball fans, those who are truly passionate about the sport, will be lost for long.
“I think in the end, people will come back around to being attracted to the purity of what baseball gives,” Dickey said. “The rawness of the sport — people are drawn to that. Sometimes baseball is a hard sport to love. It’s slow and it takes time and there’s a lot of strategy involved. But if you love that, then it’s hard for you not to love it all of a sudden. There’s something to be said about time healing all wounds. “The young people that love the game, they don’t understand the fiscal part of it. They just love baseball. When it comes back, regardless of why it wasn’t there to begin with, they’re going to be all in. I’m not going to deny my nine-yearold son the opportunity to go watch a Major League Baseball game because there was an argument over money. I might be sore about it, but I’m not going to deprive him of that.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe fans will come back to the sport one way or another. Maybe they will ignore the fact that their loyalty and devotion to the game was completely taken advantage of because players and owners made it about money instead of being the first sport to return in the pandemic. Maybe time does heal all wounds and we’ll look back and laugh about this never ending saga on how to get players back on the field.
Players and owners have already drawn their lines in the sand. Now fans can decide how much more time they want to invest in a sport that’s more concerned with winning an argument than playing baseball.