The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Athletes uneasy over empty-arena solutions
The global virus outbreak has caused concern about cramming tens of thousands of fans in for games.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. » As U.S. sports leagues weigh whether to bar fans from ballparks and stadiums to help stall the coronavirus outbreak, San Francisco Giants pitcher Jeff Samardzija is one of the few players who can tell them exactly what that feels like.
“It’s not very fun,” he said.
Samardzija pitched for the White Sox in a 2015 game played without fans in Baltimore due to civil unrest in the city. It was a bizarre scene at Camden Yards — a sun-drenched stadium, empty except for the teams — but something that has already become common internationally and could happen in the U.S. if there’s no slowdown to the spread of the COVID-19 strain that has infected more than 100,000 people worldwide.
The global virus outbreak has caused concern about cramming tens of thousands of fans in for games that technically can go on without them.
Sports leagues in Europa, Asia and the Middle East have already locked supporters out of venues, and the NBA sent a memo to its franchises March 6 warning them to prepare for the possibility that it may have to host games without fans.
While U.S. sports leagues have been in regular contact with each other regarding the outbreak, MLB and the NHL have not yet issued similar notices.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred plans to discuss the coronavirus with team owners in a conference call March 9 — the first league-wide call between clubs and the commissioner about the outbreak. But at this stage, the league plans to open the season in 2 ½ weeks as planned.
With the situation evolving quickly, athletes in the U.S. are becoming aware — and concerned — about the possibility of playing behind closed doors.
Lakers star LeBron James said Friday he “ain’t playing if I ain’t got the fans in the crowd,” and other players also said they’d be disappointed to suit up for empty seats.
“Boring. Boring,” White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson said. “We get the energy from our fans. It would suck, man.”
Virus concerns are greater in some pockets of the country — like in Washington state, which has reported 16 deaths and more than 100 people diagnosed.
Fears around the outbreak have already affected sports attendance there. The Seattle Sounders drew 33,080 fans Saturday night, the smallest crowd for an MLS regular season match in the soccer-crazed city since the club’s inaugural season in 2009.
“That would be an odd one to play in an empty stadium,” Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer said. “It’d be like ‘OK, we’re playing, but something is missing.’”
Washington officials are already cautioning residents to avoid large gatherings — and one of the biggest on the schedule is when the Mariners host the
Texas Rangers for opening day March 26.
Seattle, like all other big league clubs, has been monitoring the situation in conjunction with MLB and taken precautions around its spring training complex in Peoria, Arizona. But Mariners vice president of communications Tim Hevly said that at this stage, “we have no specific concerns or precautions based on what is happening in Washington.”
“These decisions will be made by Major League Baseball with the Mariner people that sit in a higher chair than I’m in,” Seattle manager Scott Servais said. “It is serious, it is really serious. Something that we do not look lightly at . ... But hopefully it gets calmed down a little bit.”
Spring training routines have been gently adjusted — hand-washing has gone up, autograph meet-andgreets with fans have been tweaked, and Servais said the Mariners have re-jiggered some dugout handshakes — but overwhelmingly, players have said they and their families have been unaffected.
All of which makes it hard to fathom that fans could be barred at some point.
“It would be weird,” said Mariners pitcher Taijuan Walker, who said he hadn’t played baseball without at least a few thousand fans in attendance since he was in the minor leagues.