Quiz #75. I'm Sorry
Why do I blame for myself for baseball's problems this week with the pandemic? Steve's Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz for July 28th.
If the baseball season crumbles, crashes and comes to an end in the days or weeks ahead, it may well be because of what happened on Sunday, July 26th.
Maybe you think it’s because of what happened at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. On Sunday afternoon, the Phillies hosted the Miami Marlins in a game at CBP despite finding out hours before the game that three Marlins players had tested positive for COVID-19, the fourth player on the Marlins to be infected after an initial positive test result on Saturday.
And yet, there’s more to the story. If there is someone to blame, I am sorry to say that it’s me--and more than a few others. MLB doesn’t get all the blame. Let me explain.
On Sunday afternoon, I actually saw the news on Twitter that three Marlins players had tested positive before the game. As regular readers know, since May 18th and Quiz #55. No Spitting to July 7th and Quiz #66. Pluck It, I have expressed my doubts on whether MLB and other professional sports would be able to pull off a season with an infectious disease raging out of control without immediate test results for groups of people in sustained close physical contact on—and off—the field, all while maintaining health and safety plus keeping to a structured schedule of fair competition that’s essential in any sports league.
I’ve been skeptical that baseball and football, with its larger rosters and a lot more physical contact, would be able to pull off successful seasons. Back on June 28th, I wrote Quiz #65. Football Fantasy which was my way of telling my friends in fantasy football that I would not be playing with them in 2020. In part, I admit I’m guilty of simply trying to be smarter than the other guy--the proverbial sin of all fantasy sports. One month ago, I proclaimed that I did not want to spend my time studying fantasy football statistics this summer for games that I do not think will be played come fall. My message: you can waste your time studying for fantasy--but I will not.
Trust me, I am not rooting for football and baseball to fail. I understand that people make their living from these sports. It impacts TV ratings and a whole industry of fantasy experts whose financial well-being depends on an NFL and MLB season. I don’t want to see those people hurt. For me, deciding early on to forego fantasy football was more about protecting myself. I wanted to eliminate the clutter of wasted time without draining any emotional energy on playing, organizing and running fantasy games that just will not be normal. I’d rather sit on the sidelines and stay at home--just as I have in other parts of my life, waiting until it’s safe to resume life as normal.
And so it was with the start of the baseball season. For me, in normal times, Opening Day is its own national holiday. As noted on April 2nd—which had been at one time the planned day for the Phillies Home Opener in 2020—in Quiz #17. “Be You,” in the last 30 years, I have only missed two Opening Day games for the Phillies. I have an Opening Day outfit and in 2019, Sara and I bought Bryce Harper jerseys for the entire family, proudly wearing ours for Opening Day, 2019.
Opening Day 2019 with John, Betsy and Sara.
And yet, when the 2020 Phillies’ season opened on Friday night, July 24th at CBP, I did not watch. I just wasn’t into it. Not because I wasn’t happy that baseball was back--but because I felt that it wouldn’t last. That it was a mirage. False hope not worth the energy or pain. Others were not so pessimistic.
On Twitter, Steve, a former co-worker and lifelong Phillies’ fan, shared the remarks (reprinted by The Athletic’s Matt Gelb) that were made by the Phillies’ announcer Scott Franzke in the moments before the first pitch of the Phillies Home Opener in 2020. Gelb wrote:
“Many wonder why we’re going to such great lengths to stage a baseball season,” Scott Franzke said Friday night as he opened the first Phillies radio broadcast of 2020. “It is just a game, after all. We’ve been in moments like this before. This week, I listened back to the night after 9/11 as Harry Kalas welcomed baseball back into our lives. He said, in part: ‘Baseball will go on. It won’t be the same. It’ll be a long time before it’s the same. But sports has always been a diversion from our everyday problems.’
“‘Baseball is our national pastime,'” he said, “‘and we’re all proud to be small pieces of our national pastime and we want to see it continue.’
“So why are we here tonight? We’re here tonight because we love this game. Black or white. Lefty or righty. DH or no DH. Folks, I know you’d love to be in those blue seats out in front of us tonight. And we all know why that just can’t be right now. So, in the meantime, pass the time. Sit back. Relax, if you can. And pretend, for a few hours anyway, that the world is exactly the way you want it to be.”
When I woke up early on Saturday morning and then again on Sunday morning, I checked the results from the games the night before. The Phillies went into Sunday's game at 1-1. Sunday, Vince Velasquez would be pitching. I didn’t watch, but I did hold out hope that this would finally be the year that Velasquez would live up to his promise.
And then I got an email from the Phillies. At 12:15PM on Sunday afternoon. Less than an hour before first pitch in that ill-fated game against the Marlins.
“Phillies fans, You’re cutout for this!”
They had me.
For $40--a donation that would go to charity--I could pay to have a cardboard cutout of myself placed in a seat at Citizens Bank Park.
So, as the Phillies and Marlins played (despite those troubling COVID test results for the Marlins), I got out my Harper jersey, a Phillies hat and a face mask and asked Sara to take my photo, following the directions on the email. A vertical photo with Sara 4 feet away and me, shot from the waist up, hands within the frame of the image.
I uploaded the picture to the Phillies, happy to pay the $40 which went to charity. It was my first step back into the game. My first emotional investment in sports in 2020, post-coronavirus.
As the Phillies played, I followed along on Twitter. Friends and fans Ed and Eric bemoaned the Phils as Velasquez faltered--even against a ravaged line-up for the Marlins.
Excruciating. Disappointment. It all felt so familiar—and so refreshingly normal.
But by Sunday night, the magnitude of what had happened with the virus during that game was being exposed and explored. The Marlins’ players had decided not to fly back to Miami that night. They wanted to wait for further tests Monday morning to see if it was safe to fly. Jayson Stark and Ken Rosenthal, two of baseball’s most distinguished baseball writers, wrote an article on Sunday night in The Athletic. The title, Why did the Marlins play baseball on Sunday?
Stark and Rosenthal spoke to two epidemiologists who called four positive tests on a baseball team “a clear outbreak.” Why had they been allowed to play? In part, the Marlins players held a team meeting and decided to play. The Phillies were notified and many of their players wore masks when running the bases.
On Monday morning, more test results came back for the Marlins. Seven more players and two coaches had tested positive. The Phillies’ players came in for COVID tests, their game that night against the New York Yankees postponed. The Marlins game that night against the Baltimore Orioles in Miami was also postponed. The Marlins and their infected players are now quarantining in an unidentified Philadelphia hotel. (If you found out the name of the hotel, would you stay there anytime soon?)
Stark and Rosenthal wrote about all this again on Monday, “This is way more than a wake-up call” Where MLB goes from here. They again spoke to an epidemiologist, Dr. Zachary Binney from Emory University’s Oxford College, who questioned MLB’s decisions so far.
“The only remaining right move, I think, is to wait about five days to see if any cases pop up on the Phillies, because just testing them yesterday or today — the virus takes time to show up,” Binney said. “So even if every Phillies player, coach and staff member tests negative, that’s no guarantee that the virus isn’t sneaking through that locker room right now. The hard, cold truth is, you have to wait a few days to see what’s going to happen in the Phillies’ locker room before you can be confident one way or the other. So I’m saying either risk it and play on or wait five days. But waiting only one day doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me.”
Will this outbreak spread beyond the Marlins? Will the Phillies become infected? Will MLB shut down more games? Can the season be saved? I suspect this quiz will be outdated the moment that I send it out. For answers, we will simply have to wait and see--and yet, I cannot help but feel that I am to blame.
Superstitions are a big part of sports--and in no sport are superstitions bigger than in baseball. That feeling that what you do as a fan or even a player on the bench will impact what your team does on the field. Wearing a rally cap, sitting in the right seat or saying something to jinx a victory. None of it makes sense and yet all of it does.
Chad Harbach wrote about it in his wonderful baseball novel, The Art of Fielding, describing the scene inside a college team’s dugout during a critical at-bat.
We secretly believe that the outcome of the game depends on us, even when we're only watching--on the way we breathe in, the way we breathe out, the T-shirt we wear, whether we close our eyes as the pitch leaves the pitcher's hand and heads towards Schwartz.
Swing and a miss, strike one.
Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows he's wrong.
Swing and a miss, strike two.
"Rally caps!" yelled Rick O'Shea from the on-deck circle. Everyone--except for Owen, who continued to bury his note in his book--flipped his hat inside out so the skeletal white underfabric showed. Henry followed suit.
But it wasn't meant to be. Schwartz took a third massive swing, glared angrily at the untouched barrel of his bat, and stalked back to the dugout, head down. The Amherst fans roared. Two outs.
Deep down, as a sports fan--and perhaps in other areas--there is always a part of me that believes that the whole world issues from me. Guilty as charged. I really do feel that I am in part to blame for the virus hitting Citizens Bank Park on the very day that I ordered a cardboard cutout of myself to sit in that stadium. I’d changed the universe and finally gotten in the game--and if I had acted differently, things would have been different.
And yet, as Harbach notes, “each of us knows he’s wrong.”
So who’s to blame? Why did MLB allow Sunday’s game to be played? Should they now shut down the Phillies and Marlins for the next week? Are the owners just in it for the money with little regard for player safety? And yes, what about football?
On Twitter, Yahoo baseball writer Hannah Keyser has re-upped an article she wrote on July 7th, If baseball's coronavirus plans fail, blame political leaders and the uncontrolled virus first.
In a country without sufficient social safety nets or a humane plan to keep people and corporations solvent during this time of unprecedented upheaval, businesses will attempt to reopen. It’s a debatable but ultimately inescapable outcome. You can say it’s craven, and maybe it is, for baseball to press on as if millions of dollars and thousands of jobs depend on it, but they do and it will.
As a result, people will get sick and it will be tempting to point fingers and interrogate the chain of events that led to the infections. If you look for them — and this is not to say you shouldn’t — there will be many cracks in the system: the player who went out for dinner without a mask, the plan to travel even regionally instead of isolating the season in one city, the inherent lag time between testing and results in conjunction with the everyday nature of the sport, the statistical inevitability of some level of mishandling with that many samples.
Keyser quotes Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, a professor of law and psychology, who wrote in The Atlantic about interpersonal shaming:
“In the pandemic, this urge is a red herring; it is too easy to focus on people making bad choices rather than on people having bad choices.”
Keyser’s conclusion--written weeks ago--don’t blame baseball (or schools and businesses trying to figure out how to reopen) for having to make bad choices:
MLB is trying to build a boat in the middle of the ocean, and it makes a certain amount of sense to blame the shoddy craftsmanship for leaks. But the rising tide of coronavirus cases is the real problem. The water itself in this analogy is not an immutable force…. Always remember: It didn’t have to be this way.
I’m sorry to say that I do not think MLB will be able to figure things out.
I don’t blame baseball. I blame the virus and our government’s inability to bring it under control.
I’m also sorry to say that I ordered that cutout.
Part of me knew I shouldn’t do it. In the words of Franzke, I was pretending the world was the way I wanted it to be.
I’m sorry.
What did not happen?
A. On Thursday night, July 23rd, when Dr.Anthony Fauci threw out the errant first pitch at the Washington Nationals game, my son Ted sent around a link of the bad pitch from Twitter and Barstool Sports on the family text chain;
B. On Saturday night, July 25th, Sara and I had our first socially distant visit with friends Tim and Laurie. We met them in their backyard, sat more than 6 feet apart and brought our own drinks and snacks;
C. On Sunday, July 26th, Betsy came over for a backyard visit with Sara and me. She updated us on the health of Brownie, one of her two dogs, who has been dealing with some spine issues;
D. Sara and Will are convinced that Kamala Harris will be Joe Biden’s pick for Vice President. I am not so convinced and have bet them each $20 that she will not be the choice. In case you haven’t noticed, I am a contrarian. I have nothing against Harris or her nomination, I just think the “field” is a better bet;
E. When I told Annie about the Harris wager, she wanted a piece of the action. Our wager is not in cash. She will get 4 cases of Diet Coke if I’m wrong--and I will get 4 big boxes of Lucky Charms if I’m right.
Want the answer?
If you’re a subscriber, the answer will be sent to you as a separate email when the question is published.
Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #76. Before Now After.
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #74. “Turd.”
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
Want to let me know how I’m doing with this quiz?
Please let me know about any typos or misspellings.
Comments, corrections and confessions welcome.
Thank you and good night.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for commenting.