There seems to be serious contemplation of a possible end to the newly launched MLB 2020 campaign. According to ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan, Commissioner Rob Manfred informed MLBPA chief Tony Clark that the league could stop the campaign if the recent troublesome developments are not addressed.
While this could and may become a contentious issue, the message does not appear to be a threat. Instead, Passan labels it as a “reality check” for sports. Obviously, both owners and players would suffer financially if the season is punished.
The concerns are already well known. More than half of the Marlins’ active roster has been reduced with COVID-19 and the team is not currently playing. The Phillies are also frozen as they recently played in the Miami organization. And now two Cardinals members have tested positive.
It appears that the commissioner’s office could contemplate a cancellation or pause as early as Monday. The hope is that the outbreak related to the Marlins will be contained and that the Letters have no further positive evidence. The worst case scenario would be for members of other organizations to get infections.
There also seems to be a broader concern about the way players behave on and off the field, as some government officials are obviously passing on trouble to the league. The rule breaking behavior captured on cameras does not look good, although in many cases it is not particularly risky for streaming. But it appears that league officials have identified high-risk actions occurring elsewhere in the stadium and off the field of play.
There is great guilt for this situation. Player responsibility is an easy goal, and it may be at stake in some cases, but there is much more to it than that. Travel presents obvious transmission opportunities, even for those who strictly adhere to protocols. And the Marlins-Phillies fiasco, in which players’ sentiment was inexplicably allowed to informally drive decision-making, shows that there have been flaws in leadership and planning from the league’s highest levels down.
Of course, the most important factor in the difficulty of achieving a season is not really in the control of Manfred, Clark or any of those who are paid to lead. With tens of thousands of Americans testing positive every day, and many more likely getting untold infections, it’s terribly difficult to prevent the virus from infiltrating traveling baseball teams and / or the many people involved in organizing games. .
