Updates

1. Updating yesterday's entry on baseball: there is now at least one more team out of action, the St. Louis Cardinals, who had several staff test positive on Thursday. Whether that will affect the team they played earlier in the week, the Minnesota Twins, remains to be seen.

2. Updating Thursday: The heat wave here has broken, after thunderstorms Thursday night and rain nearly all day Friday. Now, we're waiting to see how much we're affected by Hurricane Isaias. (Ad how are your local broadcasters doing with pronouncing that one? Consensus here seems to "Ee-sigh-as".)

3. Updating Wednesday: Thursday's paper did not include all the things missing from Wednesday's edition--except the classified ads and death notices (which are paid for, so they have to run them). It did however include, again, the "special section" aimed at senior citizens, which ran complete--as near as I can tell--in Wednesday's paper.

Play Ball? Redux

My good friend Rich Kolker has been posting on Facebook about "fixing" baseball for the future--suggesting things like a pitch clock, but arguing against starting extra-innings with a man on second. That's all well and good....but I have a greater concern about whether baseball can even play even a shortened season this year.

We're just over a week into this "season" and already two teams--the Phillies and the Marlins--have all but suspended operations, mostly because the Marlins apparently were not as careful about isolating their players and staff as they might have been. (At last count, the Marlins had 17 players and staff test positive for COVID-19 and, as a consequence, three Phillies staffers are not infected and both clubhouses at Citizens Bank Park are off limits.) It has meant an incredible juggling of the schedules of the rest of the teams...and no idea when those missed games will be made up, if at all.

And this morning, I was struck by the fact that there are six other teams headquartered in COVID hot spots: the Tampa Bay Rays, Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Dodgers and LA Angels. I haven't heard anything about problems with their rosters, but I think it's inevitable there will be....and then what?

Play Ball?

Four days into the "season" and Major League Baseball has had to postpone two games--in two different cities--because a dozen or so players and staff on one team (the Miami Marlins) tested positive for COVID-19. The Phillies-Yankees game that was supposed to be played last night didn't happen...because the Phillies had to be tested after playing the Marlins over the weekend and because the visiting players clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park had to be cleaned and disinfected. The Orioles-Marlins game scheduled for last night in Baltimore similarly was postponed, because the Marlins are quarantined in their Philly hotel until the remaining players and staff are cleared.

There's no word from MLB on when or how those games will be played. No word on how MLB will deal with similar situations in the future (and there will be similar situations in the future, I have no doubt). How does baseball carry on with two or three or more games being "postponed" every week over COVID concerns, not to mention the inevitable games cancelled or postponed due to weather?

I will be very surprised if baseball is still being played three weeks from now.