It did not take long for MLB to almost come to a stop, with the first weekend calling the schedule into question.
Following the first reports July 27 of Opening Weekend coronavirus infections in the Miami Marlins locker room in Philadelphia, the notion of writing about Major League Baseball this season became a very iffy proposition. This was because MLB events quickly came to resemble a giant snowball rolling down a wintry hill, a snowball that threatened to squash the 2020 season. It became difficult to count the snowball’s revolutions as it rolled.
In point of fact, the following day quickly accumulated troubling announcements, as the pre-noon events July 28 included:
· total Miami player infections jumping from eight or 10, depending on the report, to 15;
· sports talk radio blowing up over Commissioner Rob Manfred’s suggestion that any team rendered non-competitive because of infections could threaten the whole season;
· the Washington Nationals voting not to go to Miami for the weekend ending Aug. 2;
· the Phillies game against the New York Yankees that evening being cancelled; and
· Phillies left fielder Andrew McCutchen complaining mildly, via Twitter, that Twitter was a better resource for information about what he would be doing in the outbreak situation than his own team.
McCutchen’s own tweet on that last subject was quite indirectly worded, but he was clearly, even if only implicitly, criticizing his club.
Then it was lunch time.
After that meal, people began to be impatient about some breaking…tweets. When Bob Nightengale noted clumsily on the platform that “only” a Phillies visiting clubhouse attendant tested positive among the Philadelphia family, and called that “encouraging,” one reply was: “Yeah, thank goodness it was only a clubhouse attendant and not a player. At least we can have games. Seriously?”
Except that, in fact, there wouldn’t be any Phillies games until at least Friday, as first suggested by Jim Salisbury at 2:18 p.m. on Andrew McCutchen’s favorite news source.
Then, about the time total Marlins’ personnel infections hit 19, Nightengale had already informed McCutchen that Miami’s season had been “paused.”
With four games for the Fightin’s canceled and an unknown number crossed off the schedule for the Fish, July 28 was shaping up as the day MLB might end for the year.
At 2:50 p.m. CBS pulled most of these storylines together and posted a story indicating the Phillies and Marlins would take a break until July 31 and Aug. 3, respectively. Their scheduled opponents, New York and Baltimore, would also be affected for multiple games. This surely had MLB schedule gurus and traveling secretaries cheering.
A little after 3 o’clock, however, Nightengale posted some surprisingly positive news in the context of the day: “There have been more than 6,400 tests conducted since Friday, July 24, and the #Marlins have been the only team with positive cases, #MLB announces. Since the start of spring training through July 23, 99 of the 32,640 samples – 0.3% – have been positive.”