Sports and The Pandemic

Further down the US soccer pyramid, USL has been starting up an abbreviated season. USL Championship started July 11th, and the next tier down (USL League One - where our local Madison team plays) started up over the weekend.

It appears that USL has not put enough thought into this.

Several players tested positive, and players who were in contact with the positive-tested players were allowed to play other games without even being tested.

The league reviewed video and determined that those players were safe - no COVID tests have been performed.

^Yeah, I watched part of the Madison game against North Texas this weekend. They had fans in the stands as well.

The American Association baseball league here in the Midwest with 6 teams started up and is playing, with limited seating for fans. Minnesota wouldn’t let the Saints play in state, so all games are in 4 states that will allow them to play: ND, SD, IL, and WI.

My daughter was telling me yesterday a friend of hers said that their high school competitive dance team held tryouts in a gym this weekend. 300 girls in a crowded gym, no masks, doing highly athletic cheer-style dancing for more than an hour.

Critical as we might be of professional sports, it’s these other levels that don’t have any plan other than “exercise is important for health so we need to do this” that baffle me more.

I think the reason there’s so much criticism of pro sports is because they have the resources to do it right. And if even they can’t do it right, no one should be playing. When the major sports leagues abruptly shut down in the US, that’s when people briefly took the pandemic seriously on a mass scale. Their leadership matters.

In response to a question, the UK's Sports Minister has suggested that contact sports - including rugby union - may have to be very different for the foreseeable future.

This is being interpreted as no scrums in the game below the professional level.

Two Phillies staff (coach and clubhouse attendant) have tested positive. Their next series, against the Blue Jays, has been postponed.

I give baseball a week, two tops.

Wow who could have thought having no plan would result in bad outcomes!

NBA tipoff!

Go Jazz.

I wonder if baseball's survival will come down to how much players on other teams realize that they can't do what the Marlins did. You had to know a group of players on a team would screw up. The question is whether other teams learn from that example and clean up both their extra-curricular activity and their intra-team behavior.

I'm slightly surprised it spread so quickly through the Marlins. European soccer teams had breakouts within teams but they contained them more effectively. I'd hazard that the soccer teams took the intra-team distancing and safety protocols more seriously. Baseball has looked super lax about the whole thing, and so when a couple of Marlins got it, half the team got it. I guess that'd be expected in a country that on the whole has been super lax about Covid.

Hell, it'll be hard enough for MLB even if behavior does change, given how prevalent Covid is in some areas. But if behavior doesn't change they're screwed for sure.

Formula 1 driver Sergio Perez has tested positive for Covid and will now go into self-isolation with the members of his close-contact bubble, identified by the FIA track-and-trace program.

The F1 calendar has been completely reworked because of the virus and now features a number of back-to-back events so Perez will miss at least two races - both at the UK's Silverstone circuit.

Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Nationals, Blue Jays, and Phillies all delayed due to covid (Cardinals and Marlins with players and the Phillies with coaches). 20% of the league. A week into the season.

Vector wrote:

Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Nationals, Blue Jays, and Phillies all delayed due to covid (Cardinals and Marlins with players and the Phillies with coaches). 20% of the league. A week into the season.

The local Cardinals beat writer just tweeted that the Cards and Brewers are playing a double header on Sunday to make up the game. I’m assuming since they are 7 inning games, no can get infected.

I have to say, I'm actually kind of glad sports are being attempted; sports are part of "normal" life, and, if they can't play with billions of dollars on the line, it helps illustrate how idiotic it is to try to open up in any normal way. I mean, theoretically; there will still be legions of morons who think underfunded school districts should be able to do this when MLB can't, but, well, it'll at least help move the needle a bit, I'd hope.

It doesn’t matter how much money MLB has if they don’t spend it to come up with an actual plan outside of “maybe wear masks if you feel like it”.

I think that's MilkmanDanimal's point. Something like the MLB crashing-and-burning would be a highly regarded, highly funded, highly visible example of how you really have to think through any 'plan'.

It might convince *some* people at least to come up with a better plan for bigger re-openings, like schools.

Especially since the MLB had the greatest chance for success. It’s a mostly non-contact sport and their season hadn’t started yet. The season is divided into series and there are thousands of baseball diamond around North America. Instead NHL and NBA, which both had to pause their seasons, are in much better situations with solid plans and commitment from those involved. It’s a massive embarrassing clusterf*ck.

Vector wrote:

MLB : It’s a massive embarrassing clusterf*ck.

FTFY.

Vector wrote:

Especially since the MLB had the greatest chance for success. It’s a mostly non-contact sport and their season hadn’t started yet. The season is divided into series and there are thousands of baseball diamond around North America. Instead NHL and NBA, which both had to pause their seasons, are in much better situations with solid plans and commitment from those involved. It’s a massive embarrassing clusterf*ck.

Yes, totally agree, but ...

Baseball is hard because you have games almost every day. When European soccer teams got infected, they could pull infected players out, run tests on everyone for 2-3 days, determine who could play, and not miss a match.

Baseball doesn't have that luxury. That same process with baseball means you have to postpone 3 games. For the Marlins, it's even worse. With so little wiggle room in the schedule, you're immediately screwed. Not to mention that it looks horrible when "20% of your teams are sidelined".

Hockey actually has to deal with similar issues right now (and NBA will in the future) since they are rolling right into playoff series for a good chunk of teams (some are going into a round robin tournament). The idea is that if a team is infected you can delay all the games, disinfect, and then temporarily sideline just two teams.

MLB should have drastically modified their entire schedule. There's no reason they had to stick to what they've always done. NHL and NBA rethought out their entire concept of how the season should proceed. Could have held a short series tournment in something like 4 isolated locations. Allow teams to have 30 man squads then 10 man taxi squad. Only hold it over a period of a couple months and just call it something else like the 2020 Baseball Tournament. The bubble plans were the only way this was going to work and the MLB has failed to even come up with anything other than "maybe less games will help?".

^Yeah, it's not like they couldn't have foreseen this happening.

It's truly remarkable to spend all that time and money creating a 101-page plan that's so naive and broken.

Vector wrote:

MLB should have drastically modified their entire schedule. There's no reason they had to stick to what they've always done.

Wait a second, here! That's totally unfair criticism: Extra innings start with a runner on second base!

Vector wrote:

MLB should have drastically modified their entire schedule. There's no reason they had to stick to what they've always done.

I can't click "Like" hard enough. Many different ways competitive baseball could be played that don't involve sending players back and forth across their "region" for 60 games over 2 1/2 months.

It's never the folks' in charge fault! Profiles in leadership!

I wonder if non-guaranteed contracts will make the NFL's 22 year olds with millions of dollars not act like 22 year olds with millions of dollars.

Leadership can plan all they want, but what it really comes down to is that people are still morons in their 20s and that's before you factor in that they have more money than they know what to do with.

Even if they're less reckless than baseball players, the sport itself is going to make things worse.

Baseball is basically social distancing in sport form, and even the limited contact has seen the virus jump across teams.

Imagine what the cross-team infections would look like if the players were slamming into each other for 3 hours.

*Legion* wrote:

Even if they're less reckless than baseball players, the sport itself is going to make things worse.

Baseball is basically social distancing in sport form, and even the limited contact has seen the virus jump across teams.

Imagine what the cross-team infections would look like if the players were slamming into each other for 3 hours.

I'm curious if they're even going to make it out of camp.

Just saw on Twitter, no link.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeTHGp7WkAE_yTW?format=jpg&name=large)

Jayhawker wrote:

Just saw on Twitter, no link.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeTHGp7WkAE_yTW?format=jpg&name=large)

Can’t wait for professional cornhole to come back.

To be honest they should just put Korean or Taiwan baseball on. It would be fitting if we were left with someone’s else baseball from countries that have their sh*t together.

More Cardinals (1 additional player, 3 staff) testing positive, today’s game with the Brewers postponed.