The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Neutral-site World Series hopefully a one-and-done
In the midst of a pandemic, one can’t be too picky.
Major League Baseball is less than a week away from completing its truncated season, and given the odds it faced at the beginning of this perilous, three-month-long journey, that’s quite an accomplishment.
So, we’re surely not going to complain about a World Series between teams from opposite coasts being played in a sparsely populated stadium in the heart of Texas.
That said, let’s hope this is a one-and-done.
MLB isn’t the NFL.
Any thought of transforming the World Series into some sort of Super Bowl-like spectacle, played in a single city that is chosen years in advance, should not be part of a muchneeded discussion on modernizing the game.
Scott Boras, the most prominent agent in baseball, has been pushing this idea for at least a decade, long before anyone could’ve envisioned it would become necessary to help navigate through a pandemic that has claimed more than 220,000 American lives and some 1.1 million around the world.
Rick Giles, the president of the Gazelle Group, expects about 35 teams from more than a dozen conferences will participate at what they are dubbing “Bubbleville” between Nov. 25 and Dec. 5, with up to seven games a day.
There will be at least nine “pods” of games, beginning with the Empire Classic on Nov. 25-26, which will include Villanova, Baylor, Arizona State and Boston College.
UConn, USC, Virginia, Florida, St. John’s, UMass, Vanderbilt, BYU, Louisville, NC State and other men’s and women’s programs also have agreed to play, organizers said.
Southern California coach Andy Enfield said the
Trojans are expected to be in a pod with BYU, UConn and Vanderbilt.
“It’ll be a great event once we get there,” Enfield said. “We’re not concerned as long as we know we’ll get tested and the opposing teams are too.”
Officials from Gazelle and the Hall of Fame were meeting Friday with casino officials to settle some of the details.
“We’ve been able to combine and leverage both our organizations and strengths to create something bigger than what we originally had,” Giles said. “I don’t know if either organization individually could have pulled off what we’re about to do next month.”
The Mohegan Sun has already developed protocols for coronavirus testing,
cleaning and managing sports during the pandemic. It also has its own medical staff and facilities to treat and isolate anyone who may be infected.
The resort teamed with Viacom over the summer to produce televised events for boxing and mixed martial arts.
Tom Cantone, the senior vice president for sports and entertainment at Mohegan Sun, said this is not a full bubble, like the NBA and WNBA in Florida, but a highly controlled environment.
“We’re just following the playbook we’ve already established and has been working brilliantly,” Cantone said. “We will just continue to do what we’ve been doing with our doctors and protocols. So far, it’s worked flawlessly.”
Each team will be tested upon arrival. Each school will have its own secured floor in the resort’s 34-story tower hotels along with meeting and catered dining areas.
The resort’s 125,000square-foot exposition center will be converted into a practice facility, with courts on which some games also will be played. The teams will move around through designated “back of the house” corridors so they don’t interact with the public.
The organizers plan to use a pool of about 25 officials, who also will be housed at the resort for those two weeks.
The casino had already installed safety devices as part of its reopening in June, including ultraviolet lighting and special filters in its HVAC system.