Jeff Katz stopped by the Hall of Fame on Tuesday in Cooperstown, N.Y., where he served three terms as mayor. It was strange, he thought, to see no plaques in the gallery for the 2020 class, headlined by Derek Jeter. The plaques were always in place on the Tuesday after induction ceremonies.
This summer there was no celebration, no throng of 80,000 fans in lawn chairs on a grassy hill saluting the defining Yankee of a generation. The coronavirus pandemic pushed back the ceremony, scheduled for last Sunday, until 2021.
“Every day there was like this ghost, this alternate weekend that was supposed to be happening,” Katz said by telephone this week. “Driving down Main Street and seeing parking spaces when it’s usually teeming with fans, players, souvenirs, food — everywhere you looked was a constant reminder of what could have been.”
Instead of giving a valedictory for his former career on Sunday, Jeter was confronting a crisis in his new one as chief executive of the Miami Marlins. The team played in Philadelphia that day after learning four players had tested positive for the coronavirus.
By Tuesday, the Marlins’ outbreak had swelled to 17 positives — including 15 players — and Major League Baseball shut the team down until Monday at the earliest. The Phillies were shut down until Saturday.
Jeter has released two statements, making sure in both to praise the team for staging a smooth summer camp in Miami before experiencing unspecified “challenges” on the road. The Marlins are stuck in their Philadelphia hotel, receiving care in isolation, as their front office scrambles to sign free agents to fill a depleted roster.
The Marlins’ debacle caused M.L.B. to revise its schedule on the fly, pairing the Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles for two games on Wednesday and Thursday while sidelining the teams they would have played, the Phillies and the Marlins. Baseball can do that? Just magically create two games while deleting others? In this strangest of seasons, yes.
“When it comes to M.L.B., this is kind of the first test on some of these protocols that we’re going to have to follow, as in changing the schedule and things like that,” said Zack Britton, a Yankees reliever and their players’ union representative. “But I feel confident they’ve shown that player safety is important by canceling these games and moving games around.”
It is natural to wonder if the whole effort is worth it, if M.L.B. should follow Cooperstown’s lead and simply call the whole thing off. Players and managers have been candid about their fears. Some decided weeks ago to not participate in this season.
They are real people — with health issues, loved ones and anxieties — and some of them say their employers are putting them at risk by staging games in 30 ballparks across the country, a two-month dash to a lucrative and expanded, 16-team postseason.
The ordeal of Eduardo Rodriguez, the Boston Red Sox left-hander, is a harrowing reminder of the virus’ power. Rodriguez has been dealing with a complication of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus: myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle. He is 27 years old and said that the virus made him feel 100.
And yet Rodriguez does not want to opt out.
“No, no, no, no,” he told Boston reporters on Sunday. “I want to be pitching yesterday, the day before, or today. I want to be out there every time I can, so I’m never thinking of getting out of the season. I feel bad every time I see a game happening and I’m not even in the dugout.”
As baseball grapples with the value of holding its season amid this early outbreak within its ranks, it is worth listening to players, like Rodriguez, who want to keep playing. Players have the option of skipping this year, and more than a dozen have chosen to do so. They should be lauded for the courage it takes to acknowledge their vulnerability and stay safe.
And while some may have felt pressure to play despite their fears about the virus, the vast majority of players have committed to this season. One veteran, Nick Markakis, reversed his decision to sit out the season and announced on Wednesday he was returning to the Atlanta Braves.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 27, 2020
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Should I refinance my mortgage?
- It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
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Is the coronavirus airborne?
- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
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Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
This is their job, and they can only do it for a small fraction of their lives.
By now, it is clear that the union’s insistence on full, prorated salaries — even without fans in the stands — was worth the fight it caused with the owners this summer. Additional hazard pay would have been reasonable, too.
The league and the union were always aware of the possibility that the virus could penetrate their 30-man rosters. That is why each team keeps another 30 players at an alternate training site. An outbreak like Miami’s, which compromises competitive integrity and threatens the health of those around them, calls for extreme measures — and a weeklong pause qualifies.
But with no new positives among players on any other team — at least not yet, as the Phillies await further test results — baseball still has a realistic path forward to completing the season.
It is, after all, a business, one of many that is trying to cope with this crisis. The minor leagues, the Cape Cod League, and many youth leagues are dark this summer. M.L.B. has the resources to try, and millions of fans are grateful.
“I think over the course of history you’ve seen that sports helps heal people and situations,” the Milwaukee Brewers’ Christian Yelich said in an interview in April, a few weeks into the long shutdown. “So, hopefully, when we come out of this, whoever is the first sport back can play a part in that and start helping normalize things and get people back to a normal way of life.”
That is a convenient talking point for a $10 billion industry, to be sure, and not everyone will agree. But for the many who have welcomed baseball as a tiny slice of normal life amid the pandemic, it just might ring true.
Things always seem to get worse in 2020, and maybe the Marlins’ outbreak is only the start. If baseball causes the virus to spread further, the league must know when to stop. Let’s hope it does not come to that.
And in the meantime, think of the end of the movie “Moneyball,” as Brad Pitt’s character drives away from the Oakland Coliseum while listening to a tape of his daughter singing. She didn’t have a pandemic in mind, of course, but the spirit applies:
“I’m so scared, but I don’t show it. I can’t figure it out, it’s bringing me down. I know I’ve got to let it go — and just enjoy the show.”
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