St. Louis Cardinals COVID outbreak another sign that baseball season should be canceled
This is pretty much the nightmare scenario for Major League Baseball as the St. Louis Cardinals are sinking fast in the battle against COVID-19. But it seems, despite rumors to the contrary, that the Commissioner’s Office and owners are committed to moving forward.
The Cardinals became the second team to be sidelined by the virus. following in the unfortunate footsteps of the Miami Marlins that led straight to quarantine instead of the baseball diamond. And, like the Marlins, it appears the Cardinals are going to be sidelined for a while as they’ve yet to hit bottom. Sunday marked the third day in a row that they revealed additional confirmed cases, and they mentioned that they still have several team members under investigation. So, who knows how much worse this is going to get before it gets better?
At this point, how can fans even think about the race for the playoffs? Baseball seems to be secondary at this point.
More important things like health are weighing heavy on our minds. Playing baseball seems impractical at best right now and, at worst, in appropriate. When — or if — St. Louis is able to take the field again, it’s going to be seven to 10 games behind its competitors in the schedule. If the club is actually able to stay healthy, it’s going to face quite the uphill battle, forced to play a series of double headers in order to catch up. That’s going to be taxing, to say the least, on a pitching staff that’s been battered by COVID. And so what if your team wins? What exactly has it accomplished. Should they get a trophy because they were fortunate enough to be least impacted by the pandemic?
As a Cardinals fan, I’m more worried about who has the disease and how they’re faring with it than I can worry any more about fanciful dreams of winning a meaningless faux World Series championship.I admit that I feel some guilt in the fact that I want players to stage games for my entertainment — and they’re putting their lives in danger in the process.
Simply put, if baseball is to continue, it’s going to have to change. The only way to keep players safe is an arrangement like the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association have in place: All the teams play in hubs or at a central location where they travel only from the hotel to the site of the contests and are otherwise isolated from the population. With 30 players on a club right now along with another 20 coaches, trainers and other staff members, there are too many people exposed to danger. It’s almost impossible to believe that none of them will get infected — and all it takes is one to bring the disease back to the close quarters of the clubhouse.
Unfortunately, baseball players have behaved too much like the Lake of the Ozarks party crowds that disregard the facts. The Cardinals reportedly went to a casino before their COVID oubtbreak. Players don’t social distance in the clubhouse, by reports, and in the dugout, which the fans can clearly see on television. Are they staying out of trouble when they’re on their own time? Who knows? The only way to be sure players are taking care of themselves and each other is to isolate them from the general public which includes their families. I sincerely doubt the players are going to be willing to do that and, in the end, the 2020 baseball season is going to be a bizarre and embarrassing stain on the game.