For the Fans

Major league baseball, the sport that planned to start the season in March and allow night games in Chicago as early as April 10^th, is all of a sudden worried about people’s health.  Owners have rejected the players’ proposal for a 114-game season in part because it could coincide with a second wave of COVID-19.

 

The commissioner’s office has an infectious disease consultant advising them against too long a season.  Gosh, I wonder if MLB will try to stop the NFL from playing, I mean, on health grounds?  Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem is also worried about the weather.

 

Halem is quoted in a Wednesday AP story telling the players’ association their 114-game proposal “ignores the realities of the weather in many parts of the country during the second half of October.  If we schedule a full slate of games in late October, we’ll be plagued by cancellations.”

 

And yet none of that worry goes into drawing up a schedule for the regular season.  Indians’ fans were supposed to sit out at 6:10 PM on March 30^th to see their team play the White Sox.  Sox fans, in turn, were expected to sit out in the dreck of early April (the 10^th to be exact) for the first 7:10 night game of the season.  And, until now, MLB has never had a problem with late October playoff baseball played at night.  Schedule it and they will come, apparently.

 

Did I mention the owners also are concerned that a second wave of the coronavirus could affect an anticipated $787 million in postseason broadcast revenues?  Cough, cough.