This is coming home now. We always knew this was a possibility, if not a certainty. As the coronavirus made its way to Major League Baseball, infiltrating random teams and picking games like a sniper – the Marlins, the Cardinals, the Reds – New York could hold its breath, then exhale, then say:
At least it’s not the Yankees.
At least it’s not the Mets.
Only now it’s the Mets. It’s New York. And because the virus seems to have a sinister sense of irony, it hits home on the eve of the first Subway Series of the season. Two well-known members of the Mets tested positive – one player, one employee – and so Thursday’s game was postponed in Miami. The member lift of the Subway Series on Friday was also postponed.
It’s almost certain that the rest of the weekend will just follow, because the new buzz phrase of baseball – of all sports – is this:
“An abundance of caution.”
This has been an ever evolving part of the MLB protocol. During the summer camp, players who tested positive were sent to quarantine, but the practices continued. DJ LeMahieu missed the entire summer start for the Yankees. Aroldis Chapman has just returned from his bout with the virus this week. A few Mets test in the summer positive, quarantine, hell, reported for duty. No games were lost.
Just before the Yankees’ opening day game with the Nationals in Washington on July 23, Nationals star Juan Soto tested positive. Well, it seems almost certain that Soto’s case was a false positive, but no one knew that on opening night. And while some, particularly Nats manager Dave Martinez, were visibly shocked by the news, there was never any serious thought about canceling the game.
It wasn’t until a week later, when several Marlins started testing positive in Philadelphia, and the games were allowed to continue, and the numbers swelled to absurd proportions – 18 players before it was over – that MLB changed its approach to this completely. The following week, a few cardinals did as well, and they went dark for more than two weeks.
All the while, New York has been spared, the only season break an indirect one when the Yankees had to visit Philadelphia after the outbreak of the Marlins. All the while, baseball has done everything possible to combat the COVID-19 pound, keeping in mind that it is not driving its business into a bubble. The NBA and the NHL are both back after rounds of spotless tests because of that setup. The NFL, in its final test round, had a positive rate of 0.006, helped together by a series of proactive measures that have helped make the daily workday of football as bubbly as possible.
Baseball never had a serious way of making one of these. There are too many players, and too few facilities. The likely bubble spots in March – Florida, Texas, Arizona – have evolved into hot spots over the summer. There is talk that the playoffs may look bubble-type, and the more teams are affected, the greater the chance that this will happen.
That, however, is all in order.
For now, what would become a surrealistic Subway Series – free of fans, free of atmosphere, free of any and all off-field energy – is now almost certain to switch, in its entirety, to a trio of double-buyers this weekend, then. ‘ t the second half of the Subway Series is scheduled for Yankee Stadium.
And that is truly a best-case scenario.
Because if we’ve learned anything from this season, it’s that it’s impossible to predict how one of these will shake, in the same way the most enigmatic of all COVID-19 puzzles is this: why some get it, why some do not. The Phillies shared the field with the Marlins during that first outbreak back in July, yet none of their players tested positive.
“It’s hard,” Aaron Boone said Thursday, shouting a second time back into the Yankees ‘Zoom Room after the Mets’ news was made public, always looking a little more sober than the moment asked. “We know where we’re signing up.”
That baseball. And so does baseball. This has been a firewalk, quite literally, from the beginning, from before the beginning, from the moment the Nats suspected that Soto had the virus and at least played it, through the ever-changing protocols that try to train on ‘ to keep the tracks.
In the end, there is only so much that the sport can control. Marcus Stroman, on the day last week when he was sidelined for the season, cited the Mets’ trip to Miami as one of his concerns. Stroman lives in South Florida, but it’s one thing to live there at home, another to travel on business there. He could not have been the only one on the team – or in the sport – who had such concerns.
And who will pass this on.
For now, we expect what the Mets will become, what their season will be like. The time was, a major concern of a baseball team was to combat the kind of miserable stretch the Yankees have experienced, one that continued Thursday with Gleyber Torres and James Paxton both wrapped in MRI tubes. That was then.
Now, baseball cities are waiting for the virus, lurking like a sniper on a roof, to visit them. This time it was New York. This time it’s home.
.
