After months of playing a game of will they?, or won’t they?, that would even make the lead actors in an ‘80’s sitcom say, “just get together already,” it appears that there will in fact be a 2020 Major League Baseball season kicking off next month in the middle of a global pandemic.

While the length of the season has not been officially announced, according to a report in USA Today, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, is expected to announce a 60-game season that will run from late July to late September, with the players receiving their full prorated salaries based on an agreement reached when Spring Training was canceled back in March. As part of that schedule, players would resume Spring Training at their home Ballparks at the beginning of July.

The news comes as MLB training facilities from coast to coast were shut down this week to undergo deep cleaning due to outbreaks of the COVID-19 virus among players and staff who had been working out at the facilities.

One may recall that the COVID-19 virus was the very reason that Spring Training was cancelled in the first place.

The fact that the MLB is even considering kicking off a season while the virus is at even higher numbers, (based on an increase in the percentage of people testing positive, and not due to an increase in the number of people being tested), than it was at when it was deemed too dangerous to Play Ball in March is to put it kindly, tone deaf.

I am running out of creative ways to say that the 2020 MLB season should not be played. So, I will just say that the 2020 MLB season should not be played in the middle of a pandemic that has led to the deaths of over 120,000 Americans.

MLB is not alone in trying to squeeze their eyes together really hard and wish the virus away. After declaring Texas open in three gradual phases beginning in May, and seeing COVID-19 cases in the state rise up like a bottle rocket nearly every day since reopening, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, noted in a June 22 press conference that, “COVID-19 is spreading at an unacceptable rate in Texas,” and that, “We must corral it.”

COVID-19 was pretty well corralled in Texas before, despite not meeting the guidance set forth by the Centers for Disease control for reopening, the state started reopening in May. So now, instead of a corralled virus, state hospital districts are sending up warning flares that if the upward trend in hospitalizations continue, they will likely run out of hospital beds. For the record, Texas is home to two MLB teams who would be playing ball within this hot zone and inviting other teams to join them.

Two other COVID-19 hot spots are heating up in Florida and Arizona, which play host to three MLB teams.

If one wants to corral a hot spot one of the best ways to accomplish that is through wearing masks and socially distancing. Masks, and social distancing work. Some well-respected doctors with decades of experience working with infectious diseases used to tell us that every day from a podium in the White House before the official messaging out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue switched to open the economy up and pray the virus away.

It didn’t really work out then, and it is not really going to work for MLB either.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, I miss baseball a lot. I wish they were playing baseball. However, I do not miss baseball to the point that I need to see it played in empty ballparks in the middle of a raging pandemic just so some owners can pat themselves on the back and say, “hooray, we had a baseball season.”

In many ways, it would be easier to think of COVID-19 like a wildfire. If, heaven forbid there were wild fires encroaching on Dodger Stadium people would not say, “well, looks like a good day for a ballgame, I hear Clayton Kershaw is pitching today, as they walked over the flames racing through Chavez Ravine.”

Instead, they would say, “look at those flames, there is no way it is safe to be playing today. Let’s focus our efforts on putting the fire out, and think about playing when it is safe to do so.”

COVID-19 is not as visible as the flames of a wildfire, but it is just as deadly, and should be taken just as seriously.

To that end, the MLB players will be given a 67-page manual that gives them the dos and don’ts of what they can and cannot do when playing baseball in the middle of a pandemic in fan free Ballparks. Such tried and true techniques include, no high fives, no spitting, and staying socially distanced in the dugout.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun and totally worth the risk of catching a potentially fatal disease just to play baseball for the sake of playing baseball.

Of course, not all players will be part of the season this year. Players who are considered high risk can sit out the year with pay, while other players may decide to sit out the year with no pay. After all, each player has to take a look at the long term, versus the short term.

Despite the pending announcement of a season, I am still hopefully optimistic that once players report to Spring Training all parties involved will come to their senses and decide once and for all that the risks outweigh any benefits of playing ball.

Unlike the NBA plan that has all of the teams sequestered in a single location for the duration of the season, the MLB is using a regional approach where teams will travel from state to state, or as the case may be, from hot spot to hot spot rolling the dice on catching the virus as they go.

A perfect storm scenario, that I am sure no one wants to see, would be a season that got started, and then had to be cancelled before a World Series Champion could be crowned due to a resurgence of the COVID-19 virus in the fall. Of course, at this rate, there will not be a second wave of the virus in the fall, since it is highly possible that we will still be in the first wave come September and October.

So, if a very real possibility exists that a World Series Champion cannot be crowned in 2020 anyway, why even risk player’s health for a shortened season?

Just call it over, and the sides can go to their corners for the contentious labor negotiations that will follow the end of the 2021 season.

If the owners and players of MLB really wanted to do something productive this season, they could flood the airwaves, and social media channels with a message of social distancing and mask wearing.

Setting an example of respecting the virus, and doing their best to stop the spread, would be so much more important than trying to see who can be crowned champion of a shortened season that runs the risk of tainting the game of baseball for generations to come.

I am sure there are people who jumped up and down at the news that baseball would return in some form this year. I certainly do not share that joy.

It looks like there will be baseball in Mudville this year, I just hope the mighty Casey does not get struck out by the even mightier COVID-19.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to partake in one of the new hobbies I have picked up with all of the spare time I have now that I am not watching baseball games.

Copyright 2020 R. Anderson