The A's and Mariners played two games more than they should have yesterday
But on the plus side, we got a couple salty quotes, so you win some, you lose some
Here on the entire West Coast north of Los Angeles, the air quality has been godawful for weeks. It is medically inadvisable to spend any more time outside than is necessary to travel between places where you stay inside. We spend long parts of the day being able to look at the sun with no ill effects. “Oh, there’s the sun",” we say. “I can beat it in a staring contest. Just you watch.”
Yesterday, in the midst of awful air quality in Seattle, the A’s and Mariners played a game. Then they played another game. It was a doubleheader! A good old-fashioned doubleheader, just like they used to play, except each game was seven innings long and the air was filled with smoke and there was no one in the stands. Other than that, though, it was a good old-fashioned doubleheader.
It shouldn’t have been played. There’s really no way around that; when the Air Quality Index, which we Pacific Time Zoners are suddenly extremely familiar with, gets over 200, it is considered “very unhealthy,” and at 300, it is “hazardous.” According to one expert, it is unhealthy to exercise when the AQI hits the red zone, which goes from 151-200. "I heard 200 (on the air quality index) was the cutoff level to start [playing baseball],” A’s manager Bob Melvin said after the games yesterday.
According to Jesus Lazardo, just before the first pitch, yesterday’s AQI was 284.
Here’s what that looks like in action:
Smoke blanketed the field. It was unhealthy. It was not appropriate to play in. Baseball charged ahead anyway, because that’s just what baseball does.
How could it be clearer that the people running the sport have no interest in the welfare of the people playing it? No one even broached the topic of not playing with Melvin yesterday; there were no discussions with the people involved of the risks or hazards involved in those games. There was only the crushing inevitability of baseball grabbing every last scrap of TV revenue that it could.
Luzardo, for one, was pissed:
This is, nakedly and obviously, what baseball is. Does it matter to them that they forced these games to go forward despite evident health hazards? It does not. Does it make sense that Rob Manfred is already talking about having fans attend postseason games, or that Bob Nightengale blamed Alex Dickerson’s positive COVID test on excessive socialization when Dickerson neither socialized nor told anyone he did?
The people who run baseball feel entitled to the money that the sport brings in. Players are not to do anything that stands in the way of that money, from being advised about their own health situation to making lots of money but not performing as well as they did a few years earlier. There’s just no way to look at those two games and think that the health and well-being of the players is any kind of a priority, at all, full stop.
When I have been outside in AQI levels around 300, by the way, my eyes and lungs both feel it immediately. And I’m not running or exercising or doing a dang thing other than walking to my car and thinking, “Boy, I sure don’t like this air quality at the moment,” and then challenging the sun to a staring contest. There’s just no comparison between my level of exertion and that of a professional athlete, and yet they’re required to be outside, going all-out while breathing in gaseous poison.
In Nightengale’s article about Dickerson’s positive test — he doesn’t mention Dickerson, but everyone knew it was him from a leak — he talks about an NBA-like bubble for the postseason, and mentions that: “The bubble format is designed to help safeguard against an outbreak that would disrupt the postseason, which is worth in excess of $800 million.”
The reason the expected revenue is mentioned, which is utterly irrelevant to how much any fan enjoys the sport, is because it always comes down to the money. Playing in nearly hazardous air quality is because of money. Blaming Dickerson for what turned out to be a false positive is because players threatening money is unforgivable, regardless of whether that money is being earned ethically. Blaming a system for necessitating draconian restrictions in order to perpetuate itself is beyond the pale, of course, and shall not be considered by any serious person.
It is unacceptable that the A’s and Mariners played two games yesterday without being able to discuss the conditions with officials. It is also entirely expected. Baseball has, once again, baseballed. That is very clearly not a compliment.