UTK Special 5/26/20

Pandemic Learnings

WWE is back. UFC is back. NASCAR is back. Bundesliga is back.

Baseball isn’t. And it isn’t close. Even if everything goes right in economic negotiations (and it isn’t going well), the soonest we’ll see baseball back is July.

The NFL isn’t back either, nor is the NBA and the NHL. The NFL got a break in schedule, plus has the advantage of being able to do some events like the Draft which provide big attention without really needing to be a sport. It actually worked better in some ways.

(Think MLB will figure that out with their draft? Doubt it.)

The question is whether MLB can use this period to really figure things out. They have a big document that’s perhaps far too detailed - no spitting! - but no one really believes in any of it. MLB could do what the NFL is doing and kind of go full-denier. “We’ll just open and hope for the best,” without fans.

No one thinks “bubble” will work in the real sense. There’s not going to be a way to truly isolate people, especially workers and families. There’s not even really a way to single-site it. The NBA can be held at Disney because it’s an indoor, small game without a complication like ice. The smallest site where an MLB season could be held is “Metropolitan Phoenix.”

There’s nothing MLB can do there, so do any of the others work? WWE just looks weird and while UFC put on a valid show, it seemed both aspirational and quirky without the crowd. Dana White is building “Fight Island” now, which is a step beyond that screams desperation. His new owners are demanding the cash flow keep coming, with their reliance on PPV problematic suddenly.

The Bundesliga is the one league where it seems there could be some overlap with MLB. No fans. No touching during celebrations. It’s a sport where in theory there’s not a lot of contact. Constant testing and teams in relative isolation. It’s that latter part where we’ve already seen breakdowns, but the key is that Germany is well ahead of the US in terms of breaking the cycle of infection.

Currently, several states, including Texas, are back over an Rt of 1.0. (See this site for details and an explanation.) All the other things the Bundesliga is doing are secondary to having brought down that rate of spread, so even if MLB does everything right, they’re still at a vast disadvantage.

What other things could we contemplate and actually change if we made a quick decision ahead of a July return? My guess is that dugouts would have to be fundamentally rethought. Assuming players were regularly tested and were already in proximity, you wouldn’t need ‘social distancing’ though you would want players being an example. With no fans, it would be easy to let players sit close by, but up in the stands.

Mound visits are the one time players do come into proximity. Despite the questions that recent cheating scandals have raised, I’d like to see a system that would do away with them. Allow the manager to talk to the pitcher and catcher without coming out. This would help with pace of play as well and you could have a neutral party listening in to the conversations. These could be limited easily, much in the way that the NCAA limits mound visits.

I’d add one position player to the wireless coverage. He could relay things to other players. Since the conversation isn’t constant, the player could put the AirPod or BeatsX or whatever in a pocket until the manager made a sign. The issue would be battery life more than anything else, in my estimation.

The one issue I can’t figure out is pre- and post-game routines. The training room is filled with ice bags, shared tables, hot and cold baths, swim spas, and other modalities. Unless you’re going to get one for everyone, there’s just no way to make it as antiseptic as needed. Infections are rampant in any sports locker room; COVID just makes it more noticeable. The easy solution is to expand these, but there’s space considerations. It’s worse for the road team, but this shouldn’t be unsolvable. Every MLB team is in a major city, so there’s likely to be multiple physical therapy facilities nearby, probably already established with an “Official Provider of” relationship. Spread the team out to two or three of these, and solved.

MLB might be the last major sport to return, so it has to do it better than the others. These and I’m sure other ideas will be as important as the economic impact. Perception really will be reality in the early days of the return.