Magic’s advice: Don’t be selfish
If baseball crowns a World Series champion in this truncated season, the players will have endured three months like no other. In order to navigate a season through a pandemic, the players will have to make accommodations: frequent testing, mask wearing and social distancing off the field, road trips with nowhere to go besides the ballpark and the hotel, even the occasional quarantine.
Three months of inconvenience.
Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson has lived with a virus for 29 years, with a daily regimen of medication. If he doesn’t follow that protocol strictly, he puts his health at risk.
Johnson knows athletes, and he knows championships. He won five titles with the Lakers, and he said that what he did as a team leader in the 1980s is what baseball’s team leaders have to do in 2020.
“I used to say,” Johnson said, “we are shut down for the three months for the playoffs; nobody can go out; we are committing to each other; we’ve got three months to win a championship so we are committed to each other for three months; let’s roll.
“And that’s what we did. So leaders must step up.”
Justin Turner has done that for the Dodgers. The team has reported no breaches of protocol.
The league officials and the players are all in this together, Johnson said, but ultimately the players have to hold one another accountable for the season to reach its conclusion.
“It’s got to be the players,” Johnson said. “... You can’t be selfish,” he said. “You just can’t.”