Adrian Wojnarowski and Adam Schefter report that President Donald Trump told
the sports commissioners on today’s conference call that he hopes that the
leagues can re-open their doors to fans by August or September. The
conference call, as we wrote earlier today, included a who’s-who of sports
decision-makers.
Trump reportedly also said that the NFL can open on schedule in September,
and urged the commissioners to work together to lobby for sports-related tax
credits for consumers.
It’s hard to imagine MLB being able to get anything resembling a full season
done if the game doesn’t resume until August or September. Even with the
proposal to play a lot of double-headers in consideration, that would be
asking an awful lot of the players, especially the pitchers. The season could
theoretically stretch on into October, with the playoffs being held in
warm-weather environments and domes in November. Yet that would depend on
COVID-19 being contained in those locations, and would also impact the length
of the offseason. Players would have less time to heal and rest up for next
year’s spring training.
Trump’s benchmarks are also being set without any real sense for the scale
of the pandemic given the abysmal lack of testing taking place to track the
spread of the virus. The CDC and other health outlets within the government
are operating on educated guesses and not hard data. We could have live
sports back by August, or not until November. It’s simply too soon to tell.
The decision to re-open the leagues would not be a light one. Fans will be
eager to get back in the stands after such a long layoff without sports. Live
sporting events pull in tens of thousands of people, and just a handful of
infected fans would be able to let the virus spread like wildfire. The health
of the players is also paramount. Even a single player testing positive for
COVID-19 could derail the nascent season.
One thing is clear, though. If baseball isn’t able to return until
September, we may as well not have a season at all. There’s a very real
chance we won’t be seeing any American baseball until 2021. Now might be a
good time to figure out how to livestream the KBO, which is hoping to start
its season sometime next month.
If you want to learn more about COVID-19, give the CDC’s site about the
virus a read. Informing yourself is the most important step.
川普跟美國各大賽事主席開會，希望今年運動賽事可以在8-9月回歸，
目前目標NFL可順利開季，最傷的就是MLB了，8月開季再怎麼打也很難今年打完全部賽事，
每天都是Double Header對球員也很傷，而且還要CDC同意比賽才能開打，
因此最有可能就是棒球季2021才回歸，
唉~~