Coronavirus wreaks havoc across sports, and MLB won’t dodge it
It was only Tuesday that I thought the clubhouse access debate was kinda pointless, because the coronavirus was going to pose much bigger problems for baseball in short order.
Sure enough, in the matter of several hours, the NCAA closed off the upcoming men’s and women’s basketball tournaments to fans, and the NBA suspended its season because Rudy Gobert is a giant dumbass.
OK, that’s only half true. He’s a giant dumbass, but if he wasn’t Patient Zero for the NBA, somebody else would be. Look at Fred Hoiberg, keeling over courtside at the Big Ten Tournament.
(Hoiberg only had the flu, but it’s still an example of competition driving people to work when they shouldn’t.)
The mistake leagues are making is assuming that players and coaches don’t participate in the same society as everybody else. The fans aren’t the only outsiders athletes interact with, and the sports themselves force them to interact with each other. If Rudy Gobert didn’t happen, somebody with Bryce Harper’s attitude would’ve made it happen.
“I live, man,” the Phillies slugger said late Tuesday morning. “I don’t worry about a disease or a virus. I live my life. I’m doing everything the same. I’m shaking people’s hands, I’m high-fiving. I’m healthy. I’m 27. The people that are affected, it’s a lot of older and maybe some young, as well. But I just live my life.”
The leagues don’t really stand a chance right now. It’s just that there aren’t many people around who have lived through anything like this, so now it’s only a matter of whether the people in charge believe what they’re seeing fast enough to make correct decisions.
Long story short, so what if Edwin Encarnación has a sore hip. He’s going to have plenty of time to heal up.
Author
No reason to wait for regular season. I would assume whatever is going to happen to respond will start now
This is a very serious issue not because the Coronavirus’ mortality rate (which is high even if it is low), the main issue here is that the virus keeps spreading with the pass of days. It’s not slowing down. Most healthy people should be OK but while they are OK, they carry the virus and can keep spreading it until it reaches people that won’t be OK, and that can reach millions.
There is also the capacity of each country to deal with people infected that might or not be OK with this disease because in many cases, it requires medical attention, ICU, etc which the world cannot supply at the moment. That’s, I believe, the biggest concern not to mention the economic collapse is causing which is in itself another problem as people will have less money to cope with other inconveniences in life (like retiring without being a burden to the government or others) or other non-Coronavirus diseases.
At this point, I am sure we won’t have a normal baseball season if any at all.
I am working from home more than ever before. I hope you guys stay safe and nothing happens to any of you or loved ones.
I’m sharing this article far and wide, it’s very informative and is backed up by a lot of reputable sources and facts:
It calls on “social distancing” as pretty much the best way to slow down the spread and stop as best we can the virus. I’ve also been working from home nowadays as there were reported cases near my area and nobody is taking any chances. This is serious and we’re going to see a huge shift in ways of life, sports being cancelled just the tip of the iceberg. Ahh and right when the Sox were finally going to be truly exciting…
Give the article a read, it’s really good stuff.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
Yeah — that one’s an eye-opening piece. I think the biggest shock to me is the length of time between infection and diagnosis. Seems like it’s at least a week. Schools seem to only be closing if there’s a confirmed case connected with the school. That feels a little too late.
Your last sentence is an understatement in how slowly institutions are responding, but I can confirm at least some schools are closing before documented cases are identified. My employer immediately suspended classes after the WHO’s announcement yesterday and when we come back, it will be online.
We don’t have any confirmed cases so far, but I’d feel better about that statement if the United States was testing at the rate South Korea is right now.
Yup. Can confirm my institution just announced they’re suspending classes effective Monday, then pivoting to online delivery after Spring Break. Students are expected to be out of the residence halls by the end of the day tomorrow. No confirmed cases here, but two confirmed in the county south of us.
I don’t know if anything has changed at Scott Hall in my UW-Oshkosh days, but that wasn’t an easy place to move in or out of in a timely manner.
Nope, Scott Hall is still pretty much its usual self. My guess is a lot of faculty will cancel classes tomorrow, too. The library is already a ghost town.
Grinnell College where my daughter works is in the process of shutting down. No cases here yet. It’s a proactive step from an institution headed up by a man who was previously the director of NIH.
Agreed, especially with colleges and universities, but it seems a bit tricker in the case of elementary schools. I’m sure there are a lot of medical professionals with children in elementary schools. I’m not sure what happens if schools cancel, but clearly this is not the time to put more strain on them. I wonder if schools could set up some sort of daycare kind of thing just for medical professionals working on the virus?Â
Great Read Anohito, interesting stuff. sadly i booked a hotel room for the st paddys festivities(that were mostly canceled this weekend) but still wanted to bar hop…may have to do that in a face mask.
Hope everyone else watches their hands, nasty asses.
I would HATE for the season to canceled but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised. As I wrote on Twitter, I don’t expect this virus to slow down anytime soon and 2020 is going to be a historically weird year.
I won’t be too affected. I’m on parental leave with my youngest son until September. The two older ones are also home because they are coughing and school does not allow that currently. My wife will start working from home next week. In the meantime my father, who has severe asthma (usually sick for 4-5 weeks whenever he gets a cold), says he’s “not too worried, it will blow over” and I don’t have high hopes of him getting through this alive if he catches it.
I will miss having a normal baseball season, but other things are obviously MUCH more important!
I hope your father never catches this or any form of cold. I had an aunt who suffered severe asthma all her life. It really inconvenienced her a lot, but she lived past her late 80s. Stay safe.
Conference basketball tournaments have been cancelled, MLS is delaying the start of its season 30 days…
And MLB draws nearer…
Makes sense. No reason to wait
Joel Sherman reports the conference call is going on right now.
And Sherman reports the decision.
(He deleted a tweet that is now — as a screenshot — going viral for the unintended but appropriate profanity.)
Even though im expecting it to be all suspended (And it should be) baseball is in a oddly unique situation where its teams are already sort of quarantined within the spring training facilities. Plus baseball being less contact oriented then the other sports and i can see how they could continue spring training in closed stadiums.
There’s so much saliva around, though. Tobacco juice, pitchers licking fingers, spitting into gloves…
Gaylord Perry: Patient Zero
a super spreader
I find it fascinating how incapable of understanding risk most people seem to be. I urge everyone to follow NN Taleb if you’d like to get a better sense of how tail risk and 2nd and 3rd order effects are driving the crisis.
Of course the Mets are the first team to have a connection, and it’s traced back to Rudy Gobert.
I think the fact that pretty much nobody alive has a memory of another time that something like this happened is a recipe for disaster. For every person taking the threat seriously, I see two or three people dismissing it as overblown or even a hoax.
The situation in the US is far worse than the numbers indicate. The testing is just so poorly facilitated that we don’t know it yet.
Yeah, it’s a critical error. We’re flying blind here. Need to turn the lights on, so to speak, so we have a sense of the current state. I’m hearing people are being tested and told 3-7 days for results. Then sent on their way. It’s a recipe for disaster.
We need containment by way of quarantine and a much, much faster feedback loop. This is a government blunder of epic proportions.
South Korea has been delivering results in one hour. Â The federal government looks incredibly inept here.
I don’t know that anyone has a grip on this. Like what if this virus goes dormant in the Summer but comes back in the Fall. Does MLB need to plan to get all its games in before then? And, in that instance, what happens to Spring training and the season next yr? Lots of uncertainty here. And it obviously goes well beyond sports
If they delay or cancel spring training then aren’t they forced to delay the start of the season? I’m not sure how pitchers would be ready unless they can get their work in via side sessions.
The NHL has suspended play.
New York City just prohibited events with 500 or more people, and, in the words of Governor Cuomo, “for facilities with an occupancy of 500 or fewer, we are reducing the legal capacity by 50%.”
MLB Official Release:
MLBTR quotes MLB’s full statement:
To be fair Harper did go on to talk about staying healthy and having a young son to watch out for etc. Â His full statement was a little less carefreeÂ