New York governor Andrew Cuomo sent a blast of hope and optimism through the sports world Sunday with a single tweet:
Starting today, NY professional sports leagues can begin spring training.
On Tuesday, veterinarians can reopen statewide.— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) May 24, 2020
Go ahead. Read it again. I did a double-take, too.
That verbiage — "can begin spring training" — is no accident, either. With the 2020 Major League Baseball season battling the clock, Cuomo's tweet indicates that not just "professional sports leagues" but baseball clubs, specifically, can begin to prepare. Cuomo elaborated in a press conference:
“Starting today, all the New York professional sports leagues will be able to begin training camps,” Cuomo said. “I believe sports that can come back without having people in the stadium, without having people in the arena, do it! Do it! Work out the economics if you can. We want you up. We want people to be able to watch sports to the extent people are still staying home. It gives people something to do. It’s a return to normalcy. So we are working and encouraging all sports teams to start their training camps as soon as possible, and we’ll work with them to make sure that can happen.”
Making this more exciting for sports fans, though, is the fact that it's New York's governor sending the message. New York has been hit harder than any state in the U.S. by the coronavirus pandemic, with over 360,000 documented cases and over 29,000 deaths. Per NPR, since March 20, "New York state, Connecticut and New Jersey have accounted for about 50 percent of all U.S. cases. As of April 9, nearly 60 percent of all deaths from COVID-19 have been in these three states."
Meanwhile, NPR adds, the areas with the earliest outbreaks — including California and Washington — have implemented successful strategies and restrictions to suppress the spread of the disease, giving further hope to the idea that teams on the West Coast could follow New York's lead and begin Spring Training 2.0.
Currently, it remains unclear whether this abbreviated Spring Training would come in the host city's ballparks or at a centralized, controlled location (such as Florida for East Coast-teams and Arizona for West Coast-based clubs).
“We can definitely figure [it] out,” Shelton said on an early-May conference call. “However we were gonna do it, wherever we’re at, we would be able to figure out and facilitate a schedule that would work ... We’re going to do whatever the health guidelines [are], regardless of the state we’re in, and abide by them. If we have to stagger… we can more than accommodate that.”
Allegheny County currently sits in Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's "yellow phase," which means most — but not all — business are cleared to reopen with safety measures in place. The yellow phase also places limitations on public gatherings and disallows in-person eating/drinking at restaurants and bars. Other businesses — such as gyms, movie theaters and malls — remain closed in the yellow phase.
That said, the limitations under Wolf's yellow phase are less strict than those currently in place for the New York City region, which is tentatively expected to begin reopening "sometime in the first half of June." For Pennsylvania to receive a similar blessing to Cuomo's, however, Philadelphia — likely will have to move from the red to the yellow phase. That is slated to happen on June 5.
Pennsylvania as a whole has reported over 68,000 coronavirus cases to date, with southeastern and northeastern Pennsylvania accounting for over 55,000 (80 percent) of those, per the PA Department of Health.
Like anything with this pandemic, though, nothing is definitive. Allegheny County has handled the situation well, though, accounting for just 1,752 confirmed cases and 158 deaths (3 percent of the state's 5,096 confirmed). With Cuomo's declaration plus Wolf's plan to move Philadelphia and its surrounding counties into the yellow phase June 5, it's easy to envision a scenario where Pennsylvania can follow New York's lead and take another step toward normalcy.
If the Yankees and Mets can do it, the Pirates and the Phillies shouldn't be far behind.
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