Baseball tries for a season in the face of a deadly foe

Major League Baseball, in all its glorious pomposity and delusion, sent out the official release Tuesday. It began like this: “Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred, Jr. announced Tuesday that Major League Baseball anticipates beginning its 2020 regular season approximately one month from today, on July 23 or July 24.”

Wait, so we still can’t peg opening day?

Anyone for July 25? Robert D. Manfred Jr., better known as “Rob Manfred” or “The Worst Commissioner in Sports,” had one mission here, and that was to salvage as much of the owners’ television money as humanly possible while not giving players the upper hand in either a grievance case or next year’s CBA Armageddon.

I honestly don’t know if he succeeded. We’ll see. Meantime,

something still feels very unreal here. It’s still almost impossible to imagine baseball games being staged in this bizarro environment — and I’m not even talking about stadiums without fans, rules against spitting, a DH in the National League, socially distanced dugouts or starting extra innings with a man on second.

I’m talking about COVID19. Very inconveniently, it’s still here. It’s raging in several states, unless you think the people reporting that ICU units are approaching full capacity in places such as Phoenix and Houston are deep-state operatives aiming to undermine your constitutional rights and influence the next presidential election.

I tend to believe such reports. I also tend to believe the state of Arizona is “sorely lacking in hospital beds, intensive care unit facilities and ventilators needed to treat COVID-19 when hospitalization peaks in about six weeks,” as the state’s top public official said.

And I tend to respect the opinions of epidemiologists. One of them is Zachary Binney of Emory University, who tells The Athletic: “Maybe a couple of months ago, there was some hope that [rampant viral spread in several states] wouldn’t happen until at least the fall. That’s out the window at this point. So, if you’re in an area with high viral spread right now, or if your area starts to experience high viral spread, there’s a very good chance that you’re going to have enough cases that your team is going to have to suspend operations, I think.”

So there’s that.

I mean, you at least have to agree that the two dominant headlines of the past five days didn’t exactly jibe.

The first, on Friday: “MLB closing all spring training facilities in Arizona and Florida to curb coronavirus spread.”

The second, on Tuesday: “Play Ball!”

People will test positive. I think we all understand that. It’s not a reason in and of itself to close operations. Sports has a way to move forward. But the Philadelphia Phillies just had 12 members of their organization test positive. Something like that could easily happen during the regular season. Someone could die. What then?

And can we really expect 20-something professional athletes to stay sequestered on the road and monastically follow rigid safety guidelines?

I’m assuming the first draft of the health and safety protocols, reported in May, remains largely in place. It included this paragraph, to which I say good luck: “MLB will not formally restrict the activities of Covered Individuals when they are away from work but will expect the members of each team to ensure that they all act responsibly.”

And yet, amid all of that, I understand the excitement. I don’t really care about all the money squabbling, either. Part of me is excited to see baseball, especially bizarro baseball in the form of a 60-game sprint — the shortest season since 1878 — where every game has playoff implications.

I want to see the Pirates play the Cleveland Indians. I want to see Shohei Ohtani resume his Babe Ruth act. I want to see Gerrit Cole pitch again. I want to see live sports. Shoot, I’d even like to see the Houston Astros bang on trash cans.

If a baseball season actually begins, I’ll be watching.

And cringing.