Look south for blame
Would allowing the Blue Jays to play their home games at home have been a big risk to the health and well-being of Torontonians? Probably not.
The team built so many restrictions and guarantees about COVID-19 testing and self-isolation into their proposed plan to resume playing at the Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto that the rest of us would almost certainly have been shielded from significant exposure to the disease.
But … there was always a but, and in the days leading up to Ottawa’s decision not to allow the Jays to play in Toronto it loomed larger than ever.
The Americans, simply put, have failed miserably at getting the pandemic under control, so much so that the prospect of the team and its opponents flying back and forth across the border with their considerable entourages was out of the question.
This was undoubtedly the right decision. Even most Jays fans, judging by online comments, realize it was inevitable under the circumstances. The possibility of the team flying back from states like Florida or Arizona, where COVID-19 is raging out of control, doesn’t bear thinking about.
Canadians — and Torontonians, specifically — have made too many sacrifices to risk booting it for the pleasure of knowing their team’s home games were actually at home, instead of in temporary digs in Buffalo or Dunedin, Fla., or Baltimore, or anywhere else they may finally end up.
Our recovery is still fragile, as witnessed by the continued reluctance to let Toronto and neighbouring Peel Region take the final step into full “Stage 3” reopening. As of Friday, almost all the rest of the province will be there, but most of the new COVID-19 cases are popping up in the heart of the GTA so it’s surely right to wait a bit until the fire is truly damped down.
Given the strict conditions proposed by the team, was Ottawa’s decision to turn down the Jays’ request to play in Toronto more political than strictly medical, as some have suggested?
Perhaps, but so what? The fact is that public health decisions, the big ones at least, involve a mix of factors — medical, social, economic, psychological and, yes, political in the broadest sense. Those in charge must assess what they know from the science, but also what they believe the public will accept and the trade-offs between various factors. If that’s “political,” so be it.
In the case of the Jays they had to judge not only the likelihood that the team’s plan would be effective, but how it would be seen to have elite ball players and everyone who goes with them crossing the border repeatedly at a time when almost all the rest of us are banned from travelling to the U.S. and enduring all kinds of other restrictions.
And for what? In order to play games in an empty stadium without an actual live audience.
Major League Baseball didn’t help, either, by squabbling for weeks with the players over reopening plans and bungling the testing regime that it imposed on its teams. Baseball, it seemed, was at war with itself. How then could it be trusted to execute properly on its elaborate anti-COVID plans?
Hockey and basketball, by contrast, seem to be getting a lot more right. The National Hockey League will play out its truncated season in two “hub” cities, Toronto and Edmonton, so teams won’t have to cross back and forth into the U.S.
And the National Basketball Association will finish the season in its Orlando “bubble,” isolated from other Americans, let alone Canadians.
The Jays now face a tricky decision in finding a stadium, or stadiums, to call home in time for their first “home game” on July 29, and good luck to them.
But while Ottawa pulled the trigger, the Jays and their fans shouldn’t look in that direction if they’re inclined to search for someone or something to blame. They should look further south, at the MLB and at the politicians who failed so miserably at taming the pandemic.