The Smart and Safe Thing Is to Postpone the Games

Wednesday was not the first time that COVID-19 cracked the headlines, but it was the day the disease made its most significant impact yet on American culture. Early that morning, Washington governor Jay Inslee banned gatherings of more than 250 people in the state’s three most affected counties, urging citizens to practice social distancing in an effort to limit the virus’ spread and, by extension, all but ensuring that the Seattle Mariners season opener will not be played as scheduled. By day’s end, the federal government had implemented significant travel restrictions, Tom Hanks tested positive for COVID-19, the NCAA announced plans to restrict attendance at its events, and the NBA suspended its season. Finally, belatedly, the novel coronavirus hit the sports world.

COVID-19 is a deadly disease. The latest estimates project that more than 120,000 people have contracted the virus, and that nearly 4,500 of those infected have died. For a variety of reasons, we don’t know what the precise fatality rate is, but the World Health Organization recently trotted out 3-4% as a crude mortality ratio estimate. That’s a very high number, particularly considering how easily this coronavirus spreads. The virus is transmitted by fluid-to-fluid contact, and it’s a resilient bug, capable of living on metal surfaces — the kinds we touch on buses and in elevators and stadium handrails — for hours, or possibly days. Worse, people who do have it are contagious for long periods of time, and have ample opportunity to pass it off even after they’ve started feeling better.

Sporting events are prime places for the virus to thrive. Because the disease gives some carriers very mild symptoms, you can bet that plenty of sick people will shrug off what they perceive as a routine cold to support their team in person. Once at the game, they’ll eat, drink, shout, and share space with thousands of other people. In these dense quarters, COVID-19 will inevitably spread.

There’s something ghastly about the idea of dying at or because of a spectator sport. Tragedies strike everywhere, of course, but it’s hard to read about preventable deaths, like the ones at Candlestick Park’s Cardiac Hill, without getting a lump in your gut. People work hard, and those who choose to spend their disposable income at a sporting event do so in the expectation of a leisurely evening, not a trip to the hospital. And make no mistake, if MLB continues to hold baseball games, people will get sick at them. The coronavirus respects no ticket entry requirements and is particularly lethal to older adults, a demographic that happens to like major league baseball.

Even beyond the bad optics of a headline like “Local Man Dies; Had Attended Baseball Game,” there’s a social responsibility at play here as well. In Italy, where the virus has run rampant, the nation’s healthcare system is overwhelmed by the extraordinary number of sick people. The consequences are dire: overflowing hospitals, exhausted doctors and nurses, even triage. It’s a nightmare, and the best way to prevent that kind of horror from happening here is to limit the number of cases at any one time. Baseball teams, privately owned but publicly subsidized community treasures, have a moral obligation to do what they can to limit the damage. In a rational world, immediately postponing all scheduled games, or at the very least playing them behind closed doors until further notice, would be the only options on the table.

Even absent cancellations, it’s almost impossible to imagine Opening Day happening on schedule. Four teams throughout the league are located in cities where gatherings of more than 250 people are outlawed through the end of March. Should California’s restriction extend into April, that number jumps to six. And the number of locales announcing similar ordinances will are only likely to grow, particularly as testing becomes more widespread and the number of confirmed cases skyrocket in the coming weeks.

Yet to this point, Major League Baseball has done very little. Reportedly, the game’s power brokers have talked behind the scenes, floating the usual range of sensible to silly proposals you’ll see leaked to the media whenever a crisis hits. For now, the league’s only notable public measures have been to bar journalists from entering clubhouses, and to ask fans to not hand balls to spectators. To be fair, it doesn’t help when star players play down the threat as well.

The absence of decisive action from MLB in the wake of a pandemic suggests that the league is again evaluating the current situation through the lens of short-term profitability: Spring training games make money, and so we’re still playing them. This perspective is notable not because it is surprising but because it really isn’t. It’s reminiscent of the still-brewing Astros sign-stealing scandal, where the league sat on its hands until forced to act, when someone somewhere finally made enough noise to distract from the usual, and much preferred, business of counting dollars and cents. That may sound harsh, but look at the lay of the land: The Olympics are in jeopardy, Serie A may not finish its championship, and the NBA has suspended play indefinitely. Yet baseball recently floated a proposal to move games from cities with high infection rates elsewhere, a completely irresponsible decision with respect to public health, one that at best looks like a naive assessment of how the virus is likely to spread over the next two weeks.

The NBA and NCAA’s decisions, joined by MLS today, to respectively shutter their league and signature event embody the kind of difficult but mature choices MLB needs to make. Canceling basketball games wasn’t easy for either body, but it makes perfect sense as a way to prioritize the health of players, fans, and the surrounding community. If anything, those organizations acted too late. It took an active NBA player testing positive for the virus for the league to suspend play; we now know that at least one teammate has it, and who knows how many other players, fans, or microphones Rudy Gobert has touched recently?

I get that all of this really sucks. I flew down to spring training this past weekend — at a later date than I probably should have! — because I, like you, craved some fun in the sun and the return of the bat-ball game after a long and dreary winter. I don’t like the idea of keeping players and fans from baseball any more than you do; I can’t remember the last time I advocated for something I wanted less.

But come on. Baseball, at the end of the day, is a game, and its temporary absence is far less important than the lives of our most vulnerable friends and neighbors. COVID-19 won’t cancel baseball permanently; the sport will come back, and hopefully relatively soon. In the meantime, limiting the size of public gatherings is an effective tactic against a deadly disease. If canceling a slew of baseball games is in the best public health interests of our communities, it’s a steep price, but one we shouldn’t think twice about paying. If we don’t, the next bill will surely hurt worse.