MLB tick-tick-tick: Mike Trout doubtful, Freddie Freeman ill

As the announcement of MLB stars’ illnesses with COVID-19 and major stars’ doubts about playing emerge, should we really expect an MLB season?

Well, MLB “summer camp” has made it all the way to July 6. Sports talk radio is lit! Baseball is coming back…

…we think.

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At this point, for the record, if you’ve been lost in Breaking Bad or something else you never got to watch, 31 players were announced to have tested positive for COVID-19 in the triage system big-league baseball set up last week.

The Phillies closer and second baseman are ill, if not hideously so – we think. The Yankees potential batting champion is ill. The Braves All-Star first baseman is really pretty sick – we think – because his wife has announced that COVID-19 hit Freddie Freeman “like a ton of bricks.”

This, of course, doesn’t sound good, but it’s a little fuzzy. Freeman is only 30 years old, but I’m thinking at the moment of the physician on my TV today who talked about the potential neurological damage caused by this disease, which could affect people in terms of swallowing, walking, and memory loss in the long term.

What this means, for all you folks out there who doubt the severity of this current pandemic, is that this licensed medical doctor has seen these effects. Oh, sure, you may say, how can he be sure those effects are “long term”?

Does it matter? Freddie Freeman has sixty games scheduled for the next two months. Braves fans have to fervently hope that his wife was indulging in overstatement and that their star can walk in a couple of weeks.

At this point, my wife might say, “Jeez, that’s all pretty negative.”

No, it is simply the reality in the United States at this point. We’re tired of waiting. (I know I am. I’m pretty old, and I’d like to see some baseball games. Now.) Businesses must re-open, we’re told by sober economists, or the unemployment figure might hit 25 percent. Meanwhile, some politicians say the re-opened economy is already “roaring.”

And baseball players will lead the way because they’re higher profile than waiters and waitresses, or cops, or health care workers, and they’re very well paid.

The problem is that they’re so well paid at this point that they are in a unique position in modern society. Unlike most workers, they can say and mean it, “Hold on a minute.”

Moreover, as Gomer Pyle might say – I’ll bet some younger folks have discovered Gomer in the last three months – “Surprise, surprise, surprise”: The most valuable doubtful player (MVDP?) in MLB right now just happens to be the best player in the game, Mike Trout.

Some have already observed Trout sitting out 2020 could end the MLB season all by itself.

The problem is that Trout’s wife is pregnant with the couple’s first child, and anyone paying attention to the news knows that COVID-19 is bad news for pregnant women.

Now here’s the thing. By the time you read this, Trout will have said he was not “comfortable” three or four days ago – it’s actually about two days as I type this – but others have followed suit, voicing public doubts about playing.

Zack Wheeler, signed to be the Phillies number two starter, is in the same boat as Trout, expecting a child with his wife. The child is due this month. Wheeler has said, if not in this exact way, he may be out this season.

Holy cow – MLB star players are just about the right ages to have (drumroll, please) pregnant wives.

Oops, did I forget to mention Ryan Zimmerman and David Price have already said they’re not playing too? I don’t know anything about their wives or kids, but I’m sure the internet does.

TICK, TICK, TICK. The problem comes into focus – talking people into endangering themselves and their families for money they don’t need in many, many cases.

We may have some MLB games this summer. Who knows who will be playing them?

Should we expect any of them to play?