Manfred: Baseball Won't Return Until the 'Public Health Situation Has Improved'
The baseball world lies in waiting amid the coronavirus pandemic. Like the rest of professional sports leagues, Major League Baseball is monitoring the public health situation and discussing all avenues in how the baseball season could possibly be salvaged.
On Tuesday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred spoke at length in a TV interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and addressed where MLB stands in planning for the return of baseball.
"The only real decision that we have made, the only real plan that we have is that baseball is not going to return until the public health situation has improved to the point that we're comfortable, that we can play games in a manner that's safe for our players, our employees, our fans, and in a way that will not impact the public health situation adversely. So, right now, it's largely a waiting game. During that period, as you might expect, any business will be engaged in contingency planning. We've thought about how we might be able to return in various scenarios, but again, the key is the improvement in the public health situation."
Multiple contingency plans have been reported, most notably the reports by ESPN and USA Today. ESPN reported a scenario where all 30 teams are quarantined in a baseball biodome, if you will, playing in Arizona's spring training stadiums sans fans. USA Today reported a similar plan, but utilizing the team's spring facilities in Arizona and Florida, along with drastically realigning the leagues and divisions to minimize travel.
Manfred addressed those reports, along with other plans or ideas baseball executives have discussed to help salvage the baseball season.
"We have a variety of contingency plans that we have talked about and worked on. Plans may be too strong of a word. Ideas may be a better word. All of them are designed to address limitations that may exist when businesses restart. Traveling limitations. Limitations on mass gatherings that may still exist. We thought about ways to try to make baseball available to all the fans across the United States in the face of those restrictions. From our perspective, we don't have a plan, we have lots of ideas. What ideas come to fruition depends on what the restrictions are, what the public health situation is, but we are intent on the idea of trying to make baseball a part of the economic recovery and sort of a milestone on the return to normalcy."
As of Tuesday, more than 600,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the United States, while more than 25,000 Americans have succumbed to the virus.
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