USA TODAY International Edition
Canada balks at 2020 MLB games in Toronto
From a purely scientific standpoint, pandemics aren’t supposed to be political, impervious as they are to the notion of belief systems or ideologies or even borders.
Sadly, COVID- 19 long ago became a political football, ravaging its most vulnerable victims while revealing the worldview of those aiming to mitigate it.
Funny, sports are also an ostensibly apolitical activity, their childlike glory belying the backroom deals and other such maneuvers that drive their engine.
Saturday, MLB’s hopes to stage a 60game season as the novel coronavirus ravages the USA anew was consumed by the collective price we’re all paying thanks to our national mismanagement of this global tragedy.
And there’s simply no blaming Canada for this one.
MLB had flexed its political muscle most dexterously up to this point, paving the way for 29 of its 30 teams to play in stadiums without fans, laying out an impressive set of health and safety protocols to obtain the necessary permissions – or at least understandings – from an alphabet soup of jurisdictions.
Until Saturday, when That Government Up North took one last look at newly diagnosed cases of the coronavirus spiking in a majority of U. S. states, pondered the thought of MLB traveling parties crisscrossing this virus soup and then landing in Toronto, where COVID- 19 has been almost neutralized, and thought better.
Much better.
“Canada has been able to flatten the curve in large part due to the sacrifices Canadians have made,” said Marco Mendocino, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, in a statement. “We understand professional sports are important to the economy and to Canadians. At the same time, our government will continue to take decisions at the border on the basis of advice of our health experts in order to protect the health and safety of all Canadians.”
The truth always hurts.
First, the numbers: Toronto’s worst day of the coronavirus – 292 diagnosed cases, on April 15 – would be a very good day in a lot of U. S. cities. Perhaps its closest match population- wise is Houston, which is shy of the 3 million who inhabit Toronto.
Now consider the worst day Houston’s Harris County endured: 14,916 cases, just this past Friday.
This past Thursday, Toronto reported nine cases.
Buffalo Blue Jays, anyone? Little wonder that Blue Jays President Mark Shapiro took the rebuke from Ottawa with great humility, noting in a statement that the “safety of the broader community – our fans – and the team remained the priority of everyone involved, and with that, the club completely respects the federal government’s decision.”
It’s not an entirely unexpected outcome. MLB enjoys an antitrust exemption here and a certain most- favored nation status among the cities, states and counties that host its teams. Expecting Toronto, the province of Ontario and the power brokers in Ottawa to fall in line would take some doing, particularly with the Blue Jays hopscotching through Tampa, Atlanta and Miami as part of its regionalized road schedule.
Our nation’s virus numbers simply did the dirty work for the politicians.
It’s also an interesting rebuke of MLB’s 28- market plan to play a season. Canada ultimately gave the go- ahead for the NHL to set up “hubs” in Edmonton and Toronto, where the league will attempt to conclude its season by staging expanded playoffs, welcoming back players hailing from all over the globe.
The NBA is famously hunkered down in a quarantined bubble near Orlando, Florida, as is MLS, with the WNBA gathered in Bradenton, Florida, and the NWSL in Utah.
MLB will be the only major league with its teams doing the stadium- busairplane- bus- hotel cross- city shuffle, albeit while playing a regionalized schedule that eliminates significantly long flights. We’ll know in a few weeks – months? – which approach was best: the mentally challenging but contactlimiting bubble, or the play- at- home, mask- on- the- road MLB plan.
The Canadian government seems to have rendered its preference: Hunker, quarantine, stay.
On a video conference later with the media, Shapiro summed up the process with words that might wisely be heeded down here, where governors laid out welcome mats for teams and leagues, even without knowing how the virus might behave once it came time to play.
“Public health led in this process,” Shapiro said, “not the political leaders.”
And so the Blue Jays will likely play in Buffalo, where a few of them came through as Class AAA ballplayers and the glorious CN Tower will not loom over the proceedings, or even further away, at their spring training facility in Florida. They will have roofs over their head but, in a baseball sense, are homeless, all so their actual fans can stay safer at home.
That is only right. And it is an outcome borne of our own failings down here.