What's wrong with simply saying it?
Major League Baseball, right from Rob Manfred's office, took precious little issue with an ESPN report detailing its ambition to start the 2020 season as soon as May, entirely in Arizona. The NHL, right from Gary Bettman's mouth, took no issue at all with word circulating that hockey might try something similar in North Dakota.
And yet, when it comes to the paramount issue -- the health of the participants and other personnel at those games -- they're tiptoeing around the truth. Even though that truth should make all involved feel that much safer.
Here it is: Sports will return once the U.S. and Canada are capable of testing for coronavirus quickly and without discrimination.
Forget the robotic strike zones to keep the umpire away from the catcher, the managers and coaches being assigned to spread-out stadium seats because they're old men, the prohibition of mound visits ... all of it's optical claptrap. In the existing environment, the 6-foot social distancing in a baseball setting would be blown to bits, and they know it. It's disingenuous to pretend otherwise and, candidly, it's confounding that Manfred and company feel that need.
If they're laying out, instead, how I'll bet they're really thinking, it'd instead look like this:
1. Everyone's tested.
And that means every single time upon entering every secure, clean facility.
Hey, we all pass through metal detectors now, even we media wonks, and this would work the same with the two minutes it currently takes to conduct the coronavirus swab test. And once the result's returned and only the healthy are admitted, it's the ultimate all-clear for everyone inside. It might actually be the safest place on the planet. And for those few hours, anyone can behave however they wish, though habits surely will keep them from doing so.
It's all natural and normal for them and, for that matter, for the viewers back home who don't have to break out into cold sweats when Sidney Crosby and Claude Giroux have their faces inches apart for a faceoff. It's just a game, just fun.
2. Control the environs.
This part, they've already got down. All participants and other personnel would need to stay in league-administered accommodations, use league-administered transportation and all the rest. They'd need to behave responsibly, much as we all do right now. They'd also need to concede to the demands of league security, meaning there can't be exceptions straying off campus.
This way, the process would immensely lessen the possibility of anyone being infected and lessening a team's availability for a given game. If a player or two happens to get the virus through whatever, the daily testing at the facility would prevent it from becoming a widespread problem.
3. Play.
Compete. Don't think about it. Enjoy. Make the game feel like the most important thing in the world.
Now, there's one huge catch to this, of course: To repeat from above, the testing's got to be done without discrimination.
If you ask me, that's why the leagues will tiptoe through this for now. Even if they're aware -- and I sure hope they are -- that tens of millions of coronavirus tests are now being mass-produced and could soon be commonly available, they wouldn't want to publicly plot out any scenario in which the millionaire athletes are burning through tests while ordinary folks with existing symptoms are struggling to get theirs.
Still, in the spirit of hoping that sports can help the healing once they're back, in whatever form, I'd posit that it'd be all the more uplifting if everyone fully grasped how this will genuinely work. Only makes it seem that much more real.
• Testing availability isn't solved, and I'm not portraying it as such. This thorough New York Times article lays out the challenges. But there's also been immense progress, including here in Pittsburgh, on making them more available, and any project that's gone global is bound to move with unprecedented pace. A month from now is an eternity in that context.
• Yes, the testing's accurate. And clinicians are already nearing completion on tests that can show if someone had the coronavirus in the past.
• Not to get ahead of things, but take it to the bank that this is how fans eventually will be back at games, too. Already in countries that were hit the earliest, notably China, South Korea and Italy, the resumption of normal life has been based on testing of different kinds.
• Never should anyone presume I'm prioritizing sports over people. I cover sports for a living. People come here, in part, to read what I've got to say about sports. But in our nation's largest city yesterday, 779 human beings died. In all, 6,268 have died in New York state alone, more than double the lives lost on 9/11.
We all know someone in New York. My brother and his wife live there, though they safely left town a few weeks ago. What's happening there is gut-wrenching beyond my ability to summon words.
• This isn't over. Not by any stretch. Not even here, for as well as we've managed it so far in Western Pennsylvania.
In Allegheny County, specifically, we've had, as of yesterday: 720 total cases of coronavirus, 113 that required hospitalization, 43 admitted to intensive care, 22 who required a ventilator, and 10 who died. Of the latter, eight were 70 or older, the other two 60 or older.
One death is too many, but there can't be any question our medical community's efforts, as well as our own, are working to date.
Let's not blow it now, OK?
• We'll get there. Sports will get there, too, but our own finish line comes first.
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