The Challenge of Figuring Out When Sports Will Be Sports Again
Just as each individual are figuring out the immediate future one day, and sometimes one hour at a time, so too is it for organized sports.
The Oakland A’s players can’t do anything without the A’s organization. The A’s organization can’t make any plans without the consent of Major League Baseball. And MLB can’t etch dates into its calendar without clearance from the government in Washington, D.C. and the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) giving the all-clear.
When might that be? Maybe mid to late May. Maybe not. Sports Illustrated has put together a breakdown of just where each of the major pro sports and the NCAA stand with March essentially cancelled and April likely to be a blank slate with the nation reacting to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
🇵🇷🇵🇷🇵🇷 pic.twitter.com/xPaD9Z8cY1
— vimaelmachin (@Vimael25) March 16, 2020
Right now, it seems that the A’s are beginning to scatter to their homes. While the players have mostly been incommunicado, second base candidate Vimael Machin sent out a tweet over the weekend that said “Puerto Rico Tomorrow,” then followed it up Monday with a tweeted picture of him in a batting cage.
The club has told players they should head home. The A’s, like all MLB clubs, have all but shut down their spring training facilities, although a skeleton crew is on hand so that players can work out on their own. The idea is that it’s better to have the players work out in the relative privacy of the Mesa complexes (HoHoKam Stadium and the Lew Wolff Training Complex) rather than going to what might be a crowded gym.
That decision was made before many non-essential businesses were shuttered for the moment.
Even so, it seems that most of the A’s players are still in the Mesa/Phoenix area even as the executives have headed home. How long that will be true is anyone’s guess.
