Major League Baseball cardboard commissioner Rob Manfred has alienated his players, his union, and his lifelong fans, making it always unlikely that he would make peace with a virus. Manfred could be smart. He could work hard. You can surely speak intelligently on many baseball-related topics for hours. Well, many dentists too. This does not mean that they can run the sport.
Manfred’s work requires long-term vision, thick skin, emotional intelligence and, by 2020, the ability to create a plan, in concert with the union, in the face of an unprecedented threat to the season. Manfred failed. This was made clear weeks ago. What you see now, the players with positive results, the postponed games, the rest of the season in danger, is only the coronavirus that delivers the bill to Manfred.
Sport has no bubbles. He has a plan, but not a very good one. It is full of small details, but lacks a large and consistent strategy. The season falls apart after four days. If it surprises you, raise your hand.
Hi Rob
It is increasingly likely that there will be no World Series, although Manfred could put a man at second base and claim it is the World Series. And look: there may not be any NBA Finals or Stanley Cup Finals either. But so far, the NBA and NHL bubbles are working. The NHL has just announced that it performed 4,256 tests on more than 800 players and that it did not produce a positive result. The NBA had zero positive results after a week in the bubble.
If the hockey bubbles and hoops burst, which is entirely possible, then At least there were bubbles. We can reasonably say that the commissioners were given the best possible opportunity to end the season. No one can say that about baseball.
The impending question, then: Who is watching baseball catch fire and what are they learning? This means that you, Roger Goodell. And it means that you … uh … (looks for someone in charge of college football and basketball, finds a list of committees, looks at himself).
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
It’s hard to imagine an American fall without college football. But it’s hard to imagine is fall with college football. Too many teams, too many college students, too few protections, too many things that can go wrong. Each measurement feels like a half measurement.
Maybe some schools are located far from the hotspots, and have smart plans and disciplined players and universities that are basically blocked. But how many, really? All sport is a social gathering. If we count on thousands of university students (unpaid work with low risk of dying from COVID-19) to form hundreds of hermetic bubbles, we are deceiving ourselves.
Meanwhile, the NFL will surely move forward, create rigorous protocols, and, as the NFL is, fully believe in its infallibility. But the virus does not have a Sunday Ticket. Baseball players are much more likely to scratch themselves than to make contact with an opponent; If the virus is spreading from one baseball team to another, as it might have been between the Marlins and Braves, what are the chances of soccer players?
Thirty-two soccer teams traveling the country for four months is a bold effort. I hope it works. I’m not betting on that. Goodell has very little time to adjust his league plan, to make sure he is doing what Gary Bettman and Adam Silver did: work with the union and give his league the best chance of success.
Everyone should pay attention. The NFL is at risk. Every college sports season is in doubt. The International Olympic Committee should be planning to extend quarantines and bubbles in Japan next summer for the 2020 Olympics. The United States Olympic Committee should be considering radical new ways to hold its trials. They have time to plan that. They will have no excuse if they fail.
The United States has responded to COVID-19 as a lazy science student: Study the textbook for a while, then get bored and fly. The mixture of impatience and arrogance has cost thousands of lives. The country has deceived itself in a false dilemma: we save the economy or fight the virus. But the best way to save the economy was to fight the virus. If we had done this correctly and stayed with him, we would be much better now.
The NBA and NHL realized that they had to do this correctly and stick to it. “America needs games” is not a strategy. This is what the presenters of commercial talk shows say. Baseball advanced with more confidence than intelligence.
Rob Manfred had a plan. Perhaps you can read it to yourself in October, when you have nothing else to do.
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