This was never going to be a normal MLB season, so it’s no surprise that his opening salvo, a double game with the Nationals hosting the Yankees and the Dodgers hosting the Giants, was odd. With hand sanitizer pumps visible on the benches and alternately sterile bleachers and cardboard cutouts of fans, these weren’t the first season openers.
There is much to enjoy with the return of baseball. But the opening games were also reminders of the realities of this season, and the game resumed even as the pandemic continues to spread across the country. The four teams that took to the field on Thursday were affected by COVID-19, with notable players, including David Price and Buster Posey, who chose to exit the season entirely, and others, including DJ LeMahieu, sidelined by the night after testing positive. On Thursday, Juan Soto, the Nationals’ star outfielder, received positive test results, raising even more questions about how this season will work and to what extent those involved can stay safe. While the resumption of a major American sport is cause for excitement, it’s hard to deal with the fact that players wearing face masks and fans who are away are not strange quirks of 2020 – they are signs of the virus. This is something that we cannot and should not forget.
Still, there was a lot to take away from MLB’s first 18 innings, er, 14 and trade, of games that count in nearly nine months. Mookie Betts was in Dodger Blue! Gerrit Cole shaved his face! Max Scherzer was still mad as hell for giving up racing! The Giants used their left fielder’s fourteenth opening day in so many years! Let’s talk about the events of Opening Night 2020: the good, the bad and the ginger.
Juan Soto tests positive for COVID-19
Hours before reigning World Series champions Nationals began their 2020 campaign, it was learned that Soto, the 21-year-old dynamo whose playoff heroine helped bring home a championship, had tested positive for COVID-19. The team said Soto is asymptomatic and that her exposure to her peers in recent days was apparently minimal.
Mike Rizzo says Juan is asymptomatic right now. Rizzo says he was examined two days ago and that the results were received early this morning. Rizzo says that no one else is inactive after contact tracing.
– Jesse Dougherty (@dougherty_jesse) July 23, 2020
Regardless, Soto’s positive tests for the coronavirus just a few hours before he was supposed to play was a reminder of what’s at stake this season. For those of us who love baseball, and those of us who cover it professionally, it is a delight and a relief to see the sport finally return. But MLB’s comeback comes just as the US surpassed the reported 4 million cases of COVID-19, a staggering number with devastating human cost. The players, coaches, staff, media and everyone else who reported to Nationals Park and Dodger Stadium on Thursday did so even when very real danger was looming. The fact that the DC game proceeded with less than certainty about the possible exposure (the Yankees received no additional evidence after Soto’s result was made public) raises tough questions about what MLB is willing to do to prioritize the safety of those who make games happen. . Perhaps the league really believed it had addressed every possible risk after Soto’s diagnosis. On the other hand, New York wide receiver Gary Sanchez told reporters later: “I wanted to keep my distance from the other hitters.”
Let’s hope Soto recovers to full health without complications and returns to the team soon. However, he will not be the last player to get COVID-19 this season, nor the last to call attention to the decisions Major League Baseball must make.
Dr. Fauci is, Er, a little bit outside
Should Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a pre-eminent guiding light for many Americans during the pandemic (not to mention a fan of the Nationals), focus on science? Certainly. Should I have also attempted the first pitch of the 2020 baseball season from the mound? Well.
Take me (a scary cardboard cutout) to the ball game, Take me to the crowd (of scary cardboard cutouts)
On Thursday, the Nationals and Yankees opened the season in a stadium with stadiums that were completely empty. Even with the noise of the crowd, the stadium seemed strange and puzzling.
The Dodgers and Giants, on the other hand, played in front of a crowd of fake fans. Los Angeles allowed people to send pictures of themselves and family members to become life-size cardboard cutouts. It was very weird! Maybe it worked, too, since the cutouts were something to look at that were a little less weird than a sea of stuffed animals.
It could be even weirder. Here’s the current Chez White Sox spread:
White Sox fan Paul Garrett bought 100 cardboard cutouts of himself! He’ll cheer on the White Sox near the visitor’s shelter. pic.twitter.com/hj8TJbyhpP
– Chuck Garfien (@ChuckGarfien) July 22, 2020
The Big Baseball Boys are back
Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are many things. Both are outfielders for the Yankees. They are both very large. And they both have a tendency to hit the absolute padding of baseballs.
Both have also been haunted for injuries: Judge was diagnosed with a fractured rib this spring, and Stanton played just 18 games last season after dealing with a cascade of bicep, shoulder and knee injuries. So it was a delight to see the Most Valuable Player of the 2017 National League, who by the way was the first DH in a game hosted in the National League, healthy at last, and doing what we have so much hoped to see: she Judge, meanwhile, got the first base hit of the 2020 season. It seems likely that the pair will combine for much more production.
Mookie Betts debuts in his new home
This week Betts, who earlier this year looked like he would never be able to dress for the team he joined in a February trade, stated that he would wear Dodger blue for years to come. In fact, he almost certainly will for the rest of his career, having signed a 12-year, $ 365 million extension with Los Angeles on Wednesday.
On Thursday, we were invited to see the second best MLB player in his new professional home. He went 1-for-5 at the plate, and in the seventh inning he slipped home to give the Dodgers their first lead of the 2020 season.
Most notably, Betts was one of the players who knelt to protest racism and systemic injustice during the national anthem before the game. Players from all four teams knelt on Thursday when a pregame video recorded in support of the Black Lives Matter movement was shown; Betts, along with multiple Giants players, remained on one knee throughout the anthem.
ESPN’s conversation with Rob Manfred was weird, right?
In the middle of the game at Nats Park, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred joined the broadcast and answered some questions from the ESPN commentary duo of Matt Vasgersian and Alex Rodríguez. It was a strange segment, to put it mildly. A-Rod was deferential, referring to Manfred as “Commissioner Manfred” and praising him for his role in negotiating the 2020 season. Given the months of difficult, hectic, and occasionally troubling negotiations that preceded the return of baseball, it was a note Weird to hit, obtuse at best, and at worst, overly compassionate with the owners who often seemed to put the end result above all else. . Considering that A-Rod is reportedly trying to become an owner … hm.
Add to this what appeared to be real uncertainty on the part of broadcasters, not to mention baseball’s general public, about the structure of the hastily announced expanded playoffs, and it wasn’t exactly a banner day for management. of sport.
Are you there, American baseball fans? It’s me, the horrible weather of the District of Columbia
Washington, DC, is experiencing an unusually ugly period of summer, even by its own swampy standards. Earlier this month, the city nearly broke a record for consecutive days above 90 degrees. On Thursday, two exit limits collided just outside the city limits, creating a new nightmare storm. There was an absurd amount of lightning and prodigious amounts of rain; The famous Nationals Skittles canvas got its first official training of the season.
The players were sent to the middle of the sixth inning while they waited in hopes that the storm might subside. Not so, and the Yankees won the restricted matter 4–1; Cole’s Yankees debut officially turns into a full one-hit game. In the end, the rain delay was 16 minutes longer than the actual game, for The Washington Postit’s Jesse Dougherty.
The Dodgers are the favorites of the World Series for a reason
I’m a fan of the Giants, so please understand how much it hurts to admit this, but on Thursday the Dodgers faced a divisive enemy that maybe, just perhaps, it will not be a monster this year. San Francisco is halfway through a rebuild, having seen Posey choose to leave, manager Bruce Bochy retiring, ace Madison Bumgarner beheaded by the Diamondbacks in the offseason, and top hitters Brandon Belt and Evan Longoria begin the season in IL.
Which is a very long way of saying that the Dodgers were not expected to lose Thursday. But Dustin May looked shaky starting in place of ace Clayton Kershaw, who was scratched earlier in the day with back pain. The Giants scored first, briefly placing Pablo Sandoval in a tie with Adam Eaton for the NL lead in RBI.
The Dodgers finally took the lead in the seventh inning, then quickly broke things up and reminded everyone how this team is likely to continue this season. It’s a fierce lineup: Betts, Cody Bellinger, Max Muncy and Co. won 8-1, and they are the championship favorites for some reason.
