EDITOR’S NOTE: Ryan Zimmerman is a two-time All-Star player who has played 15 years in the majors, all with the Washington Nationals. He holds most of the team’s career hitting records, and his two homers and seven RBIs last postseason helped the Nationals win their first World Series championship. Zimmerman has been offering his thoughts, as AP sports writer Howard Fendrich was told, in a newspaper while waiting for baseball. to return. In the tenth installment, Zimmerman, 35, discusses what he has in mind now that there is a plan for a 2020 season..
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I am still deciding whether to play.
After all, it is a decision not only for me, but also for my family.
I have a 3 week old baby. My mother has multiple sclerosis and is at a super high risk; If I end up playing, I can rule out the idea of watching it until weeks after the season ends.
There are many factors that I and others have to take into account. I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer; It is everyone’s individual choice.
At the end of the day, does a player feel comfortable going to the field every day and, most importantly, in my case, do they feel comfortable coming home every day and feel like they are not endangering anyone else?
I am by no means someone who thinks we all need to hide in our homes until a vaccine is found. That is not feasible for anyone. We just need to do things in a sensible and smart way.
I don’t want to be pessimistic about this. I hope, whatever you decide, the season turns out well, nothing happens, no one gets seriously ill.
But there are many moving parts and many variables that we will not be able to control. That is what we need to evaluate.
There is a lot of talk about rule changes for additional entries and DH; In my mind, what better year to try some of these things?
With a 60-game season, there will be people who think certain things about this year, anyway. So if you’re thinking of changing things in the game at some point, this is the perfect year to see if people in baseball and fans like it, see if they don’t like it.
But I’m thinking more about the health and safety perspective, and the hardest part for us will be the aspect of the journey.
That includes for “spring training,” when people will fly from across the country and also from outside the country. It will be interesting to see how that part works, with so many people going from wherever they are and suddenly meeting.
We haven’t seen a schedule yet, but I’m going to assume that 30 games are on the way. I don’t know how long the trips will take, but it is a significant amount of travel and staying in hotels and places that are outside of where we have been allowed to go in the past few months.
Once the games begin in the NBA and NHL, they will not travel from city to city. Once they are in their places, they are there.
And I will tell you this about baseball: the owners are not going to travel with us. I’m pretty sure they’ll be hanging out at home watching baseball on TV.
We will be the ones out there if we decide to play. We are the ones who take all the risk.
If you are going to participate, there are rules you must follow. The “bubble” is as good as the people inside the “bubble”. Not that there is COVID police on the floors of our hotel.
So it will all come down to the players and everyone involved and what they do with every second of their day.
When you start thinking like that, it starts to get a little more complicated.
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