The daunting challenges of baseball in 2020
With the news Wednesday that the MLB owners backed down and finally agreed to give the players what was agreed to salary-wise in their first deal back in late March (which is a very good thing, considering the owners have been sticking it to players while making record profits the past few years …) it seems there may actually be a baseball “season.”
Using the term loosely, of course.
My position has been clear from day one. We are in the middle of a pandemic, where infected cases are now going up daily because states have re-opened too soon. Baseball, indeed no sport, should be played until January 2021, there should be 100 million vaccine doses available (per Dr. Fauci, assuming the clinical trials are successful in July).
This is not baseball.
Not with no fans, with a bastardized schedule of far less than 100 games, with bizarre rules to try to combat the virus (rules players are going to ignore, not because they are trying to get someone sick but unconsciously, because they’d been doing things like high-fiving, picking up other players' equipment, and spitting all their lives) to crown an illegitimate champion in a season where basically everybody makes the playoffs.
And that’s not even going into what happens, say, if half of the Yankees roster gets sick, or the entire Brewers starting staff has to be quarantined.
Just absolute stupidity.
Regarding the White Sox, on paper, the delay appears to help them. Injured pitchers like Dane Dunning, Carlos Rodón and Michael Kopech have had more time to heal from ACL injuries. The “minor” injuries that hit players like Gio González and Yasmani Grandal should be a thing of the past; they should go to the second spring training 100% healthy and ready to go.
The expanded playoffs should also help increase the chances of the White Sox making the postseason for the first time since 2008.
Now let’s play devil’s advocate here, and slow things down.
First off, just look at the American League. It is stacked, loaded and by far the tougher of the two professional leagues, and it’s not even close. Barring the virus stepping in and gutting a club, you have to think the Yankees, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Cleveland (on track to get all its injured pitchers back), Houston, Oakland and the Angels are locks.
That means, on paper, the Sox are fighting Boston and Toronto for a final playoff spot.
No guarantees there, folks.
Plus, history says that bizarre, truncated seasons generally haven’t been kind to the Sox. Either the baseball gods have dumped on the club, or they’ve shot themselves in the foot with self-inflicted wounds:
1981 The Sox actually had a winning record (granted, it was only 54-52). But because of baseball’s goofy “split season” format, somehow the Kansas City Royals qualified for the postseason. Their record that year? 50-53.
1994 With the Sox in first place in the division, with the fourth-best record in baseball and second-best in the American League, play stopped because of a labor impasse in August. Owners were insisting on trying to implement a salary cap (sound familiar?). The season never resumed. The Sox were on course to make the postseason for the first time in back-to-back seasons in franchise history (a feat they still haven’t accomplished — the only one of the original 16 pre-expansion franchises to have never done it). One of the driving forces behind the owners’ hard-line stance was Jerry Reinsdorf, who had this insane notion that the owners could somehow get a salary cap in place and break what is regarded as the strongest labor union on the planet. He was willing to neuter his own club's chances to make the World Series in order to break the union.
1995 After Federal Court judge Sonia Sotomayor ruled the owners were not negotiating in good faith, the owners caved. A shortened season was scheduled, with a mini-spring training in order to squeeze in as many games in as possible. The Sox, who for all intents and purposes were the best team in the division the previous two seasons, fell apart and stumbled to a record of 68-76-1, 32 games behind Cleveland. Why? Part of it, a large part, was because some players felt there would not be a 1995 season and didn’t train properly in the offseason. That came to me directly from some of the players on that team. The Sox began that year 2-8, and things only got worse from there both on the field and with attendance.
There’s an old saying, “Be careful what you wish for …” Nothing is guaranteed in a bizarre 2020 season. They shouldn’t be playing, and when all is said and done the virus may make the entire exercise a moot point.
I only hope two things. One, that no White Sox player, coach, front office member, broadcaster or support staff person gets sick. Also, that regardless of how many games are played, the White Sox have a winning season.
The absolute worst scenario would be where a bunch of the Sox players get sick, the “season” goes right down the toilet and all the offseason goodwill, excitement, and momentum goes right down the toilet with it.
Oh and the Cubs get back to the World Series. That’s a situation I don’t even want to contemplate.