Many things have been done (even on my part!) About how detailed, detailed and well-intentioned the MLB 2020 Operations Manual. All those diagrams, subsections and footnotes that give the impression that the series of protocols are sufficient to rethink the coronavirus pandemic. But just because a plan is long doesn’t mean it will work. Not all plans are equally feasible.
Here are some facts:
One of these plans doesn’t work like the others. The difference, at least in the past week, is whether there is a so-called bubble system that sequesters athletes as a way of mitigating the spread from the community.
Months ago, MLB briefly considered a bubble, or a multi-bubble plan, in places like Arizona and Florida, where there are abundant spring training facilities (but also the increase in summer temperatures and COVID cases ). The players refused to be isolated from their families and the league quickly abandoned the problem.
The season they have planned in the end foresees that the teams remain within their geographical area, playing exclusively against their division and the corresponding division in the other league. This certainly simplifies the journey and makes it more feasible (logistically) to play 60 games in 66 days. But it is by no means a concession to how contagious and dangerous COVID-19 is.
Baseball is socially distant by nature on the field, but being in a locker room, on the bench or on a team bus is not. The problem remains that players have many opportunities to contract coronavirus in their various communities of origin – especially if they occur in states that are experiencing unprecedented spikes – and spread it to each other in the baseball stadium or en route to one. stadium in a different city.
This is a problem for MLB. And it’s a problem for the country if you consider that those players could spread it to support staff and other essential workers who don’t have access to the same solid test and health care systems.
It took only a few days of sporting action outside a bubble to start exactly that scenario. Even if the cost of this particular outbreak is “only” a couple of games and the health of a handful of players, MLB should seriously consider whether this result is inherent in the plan it has implemented and actually inevitable if it attacks in the future. Because people saw it coming. Playing without a bubble was a bad idea, so predictable.
When I interviewed Dr. Arthur Caplan, chief founder of the Medical Ethics Division at the NYU School of Medicine and a co-chair of the Mayors’ Advisory Committee on Sports, Recreation and Health, I was interested in big, intangible ideas as if fans have l a moral obligation not to enjoy baseball if it has started. On the contrary, he wanted to object to the specifications of the plan that MLB was implementing.
“I don’t understand in the least why they are trying this trip,” he said with evident frustration.
And, against my rhetorical defense, that canceling a season would cost work, “You should hope to be able to keep a job and everyone understands it, but at the same time it doesn’t mean you have to take the stupidest plan.”
The “dumbest plan” is what puts teams on planes and buses and in hotels and restaurants across the country, in and out of hot spots.
In an era defined by meme-ified uncertainty, a few things we are clear. For example, if it would be more ethical to play sports in a bubble.
“Yes,” said Caplan unequivocally.
To be honest, I have some idea why they are experiencing this journey between the stadiums of home. Baseball has many more people playing many more games on much larger playing surfaces. Identifying one or more sites that can hold an entire baseball season for multiple teams with sufficient transmission capabilities may be impossible.
In addition, life within a mandatory sports bubble seems strange and lonely. It is dystopian and dehumanizing to distribute our athletes between hotels and stadiums by critically monitoring the rest of their movements for the enjoyment of television entertainment and the income of the owners of billionaire teams. If athletes give up on a season in a bubble, I wouldn’t regret it.
Instead of strong surveillance and a secure campus, MLB has opted to rely on personal responsibility at each shift. At press conferences, clubhouse managers emphasize the importance of unity and communication, trusting that their teammates understand how a boy can ruin everything for everyone. After the first round of positive cases popped up on the Marlins, the team asked veteran short film Miguel Rojas if they still had to play. The commissioner retains the power to postpone matches or suspend the season, but the league cannot force teams to play if they feel insecure.
Athletes are conditioned by discipline, the reasoning goes. But they are also conditioned to play through pain. They are not infectious disease experts or public health advocates, no matter how justifiable we want this season to be as a model of good practice. Relying on personal responsibility to fight the pandemic has proven to fail.
Even though the players were clamoring for one season, the burden of keeping them safe and the wider community was safe. Maybe a bubble would have been sufficient and feasible or maybe not. But the current plan is clearly not.
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