How would starting a season in Arizona work?

With baseball in its fourth week of the coronavirus shutdown, we assumed there might not be many questions for an A’s Twitter mailbag.

The Ole ’Bag is nothing if not glad to be wrong, yet again, especially with whispers of resumption (absurd, to our thinking) raised by ESPN and other outlets.

@jackconboy: Do you think it would be possible for all 30 teams to play at Arizona spring training facilities to start the year? Wouldn’t it be too hot?

Heat is the least of the concerns, unless COVID19 does prove to be seasonal and not a threat at all when things warm up in the desert. Experts don’t have a handle yet on whether that’s the case, and even if it is, baseball plans to play deep into the fall were it to resume — when a seasonal virus might start making its return.

So the real question is: Could baseball set up in Arizona and get under way with players and staff and essential support all in quarantine for months? That’s under consideration, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. It’s a wildly unwieldy proposition. Among those who’d be in contact with players or at least in relative vicinity: medical and training staff, equipment staff, umpires, groundskeepers, maintenance, broadcasters and their crews, hotel workers, transportation and security workers, just to name a few. Would all those folks also be in quarantine for months? What about their families? These folks aren’t making millions, some are minimumwage workers. Where would they be housed if not with their families?

And could, or should, a sport with an excessive amount of spitting and pitchers who lick their fingers before every pitch realistically resume before there is a vaccine?

What happens the first time someone involved tests positive? Does everything come to a halt or do all teams put themselves and all their support staffs at risk playing opponents who potentially have been exposed?

The A’s understand the danger of COVID19. Minorleague coach Webster Garrison is on a ventilator in a Louisiana hospital. I guarantee no one with the Oakland organization is taking this virus lightly, and I’m not sure the A’s would rush back into action without many safety assurances.

@Smply_Blsd: Do you think MLB will play crowd noise over the speakers if they play in empty stadiums? What about fan videos like they do for us sometimes?

I’d imagine if games were to start in empty stadiums, there would be some sort of creative efforts to simulate noise or even crowds; I saw that one Chinese team is putting robots in seats. Fan videos sound like a great thing to provide during inning breaks and on telecasts. There would be many ways to involve fans, I’d think, even with empty stands.

@apdonaldson: Can you speak to baseball’s history during times of crises? So many fascinating stories obviously, says a lot about how important baseball is to our history and everyday lives. I’m a newer fan (6 years), but I think the complete absence is significant in lots and lots of ways.

The only thing I can relate this to personally is what baseball meant to New York after 9/11. The A’s played the Yankees in the postseason the following month and I also covered the Yankees in the ALCS after that, and there was a palpable sense in the city that baseball lifted spirits and helped bring the community together. The games in New York were especially moving, with numerous tributes to first responders and others who’d lost their lives.

Baseball played through both World Wars, though many players left to serve overseas — and also through the Spanish Flu outbreak.

Many thought baseball should shutter during World War II, but President Franklin Roosevelt was among those who encouraged the sport, as the national pastime, to play in order to provide some entertainment and a sense of normalcy.

@RussellsRitings: How does service time work with no baseball or half a season?

With no season at all, all players will receive the same service time they did in 2019. If there’s half a season, service time will be prorated. In the event of a 100game season, for instance, if a player was active for 50 games, he’d receive half a season of service time.

@tjohnson1960: At what point do you think they would decide to cancel the season? Are there too few games that could be played to constitute a season?

This is a big unknown, but you’d have to think if you want even somewhat slightly balanced schedules (not that the current schedule is really balanced, but that’s a rant for a different day), that you’d need 100plus games if you want at least 12 games against division opponents (two home series per team) and six against the rest of the league (one home series per team). Add in interleague play and you’d need a good 120 games. I’m not sure four months of baseball is going to be feasible, though. But six or nine games against division opponents seems wildly lacking, and one series only against everyone else also seems pretty light. You never know what a billiondollar industry facing massive shortfalls will do, though.