Let’s assume a relatively rosy near future for America in the wake of the coronavirus. For this exercise, that means a mid-5-digit number of people dead, instead of, well, more than that. It also means that the curve is flattened and public health officials give us an attaboy for the good work everyone did staying in. We did it, everyone! We got through the worst of it with our civilization intact and now things will be better.
We still won’t be able to go to baseball games.
The coronavirus will not stop existing when June rolls around, even if most of us mostly do everything right. It will continue popping up in assorted places around the country and world, forcing many Americans to learn geography for the first couple minor outbreaks, and then not bothering after that. It will be beaten, but not eradicated, like Nixon in 1960. And we’ll have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t come back in force.
I don’t know how Watergate fits into the Nixon metaphor, so I’m going to move on.
That means no mass gatherings. I’m not an epidemiologist, so I couldn’t say whether gatherings of 50 people will be okay — I suspect that, when we’re not seeing mass infection, people will just gather because this stupid thing should be over already and damn the consequences — but tens of thousands of people in one stadium to watch a sport? No. No chance. Absolutely not.
The risk would be too high and the reward practically nothing. Do you like seeing baseball in person? Me too. But baseball games are not worth risking another outbreak.
Do you think that’s too careful? Are you, right now, thinking, “I mean, we have to live our lives at some point”? I sympathize with that line of thinking. But on the other hand, there’s this.
You are, perhaps, too busy right now to read an entire article. I understand! We all have a lot to do these days. I’m here to help. Here are a few choice excerpts (read: half the article) so you get the gist of what it’s about.
Excerpt 1:
ROME (AP) — It was the biggest soccer game in Atalanta’s history and a third of Bergamo’s population made the short trip to Milan’s famed San Siro Stadium.
Nearly 2,500 fans of visiting Spanish club Valencia also traveled to that Champions League match.
More than a month later, experts are pointing to the Feb. 19 game as one of the biggest reasons why Bergamo has become one of the epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic — a “biological bomb” was the way one respiratory specialist put it — and why 35% of Valencia’s team became infected.
Excerpt 2:
Less than a week after the game, the first cases were reported in the province of Bergamo.
At about the same time in Valencia, a journalist who traveled to the match became the second person infected in the region, and it didn’t take long before people who were in contact with him also had the virus, as did Valencia fans who were at the game.
Excerpt 3:
As of Tuesday, nearly 7,000 people in the province of Bergamo had tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 1,000 people had died from the virus — making Bergamo the most deadly province in all of Italy for the pandemic. The Valencia region had more than 2,600 people infected.
Excerpt 4:
“I have heard a lot (of theories), I’ll say mine: Feb. 19, 40,000 Bergamaschi went to San Siro for Atalanta-Valencia,” Fabiano di Marco, the chief pneumologist at the hospital in Bergamo, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “In buses, cars, trains. A biological bomb, unfortunately.”
Excerpt 5:
Italian soccer players’ association president Damiano Tommasi believes sports authorities should look long and hard at the Atalanta match before restarting leagues.
“Look at what’s happening in China, where players are testing positive for the coronavirus now — despite all the safety rules and precautions being taken,” Tommasi told the AP, referring to a recent positive test for former Manchester United midfielder Marouane Fellaini with Chinese club Shandong Lunen.
Fellaini’s positive test was alarming because, while the outbreak began spreading in China, the virus has reportedly been receding there.
“It’s not going to be enough to just test the athletes,” Tommasi added. “The entire setting needs to be safe. Because if one team is stuck, it blocks the entire system.”
At the time that soccer game was played, people outside of China didn’t really accept or understand the risk that COVID-19 represented. We all do now. And so not only would it be immoral to invite people to take that risk — a risk that they would then spread to everyone they came into contact with — but it could be a basis for legal action, a much more powerful deterrent to large, rich baseball organizations than pesky morality.
It would be negligent to put on this kind of event this year. It would be a PR nightmare. In the era of revenue coming more from TV deals than gate receipts, it would also be much less necessary than in times past.
Yes, MLB (and the other leagues) might well choose to take a chance on people’s lives in order to make somewhat more money. People, it turns out, like making money. But that would be surprising to me. If baseball comes back this year, I’m expecting to see it played in empty stadiums. Anything else would be tempting fate.