We Don't Deserve Baseball
Major League Baseball announced this week via Instagram the proposed schedule for a shortened, virus-laden 2020 season. It includes Opening Day on July 23 and a final day of the regular season on September 27.
It’s not going to happen, and if it does, we don’t deserve it.
As of last week, 31 major leaguers across 19 teams have already tested positive for COVID-19, a really rad virus that’s killed 133,000+ Americans and dug an additional hasty and cavernous grave for our economy. Big name players are also announcing their refusal to play, regardless of test results, including David Price, Mike Leake, Felix Hernandez, Nick Markakis, and Ryan Zimmerman. More are sure to drop out, and they should.
Resurrecting baseball is a terrible idea for a nation in peril - it gives idiots firepower to argue that we’re doing OK, and we decidedly are not. We don’t deserve a break. We don’t even deserve the fleeting image of a break on the horizon. As a nation, we’ve proven through laziness and unwarranted privilege that we haven’t paid the price of admission for sports. We aren’t willing to wear masks to Costco to buy our bulk frozen taquitos without yelling at somebody’s grandmother. It is beyond unfair to expect players to literally put their lives on the line for us. Watch Korean baseball, you dicks. They took this seriously.
If you need more proof of our unworthiness, I recommend you read the comments on any of MLB’s recent social media posts — where they have been posting pro-mask-wearing and Black Lives Matter content for the past few weeks. I’m sure you can imagine the replies. But sir, how can players breathe if they wear masks? How will they ever be able to run bases? Just wait until an umpire keels over - the coroner will declare it mask-related heat stroke death. KeEp PoLiTiCs OuT oF sPoRts.
OK, but a lot of baseball fans are wearing masks. Right?
I still don’t want to watch my favorite players’ lungs explode this year — sidelined by COVID for weeks that might turn into months — just because I’m bored. For fuck’s sake, I’m so bored, I wrote this. A bad case of COVID could halt careers through 2021. (Byron Buxton is so fragile, guys. Please, leave him alone.) God forbid any players actually fucking die. Are players literally dying to play? Is baseball worth even one death? (Note: “They’re dying to play” is the teaser slogan for my upcoming dark take on Field of Dreams titled Field of Screams. Copyright me, 2020.)
And then there’s the COVID truthers, like the incomparable sloth Joe West, who apparently thinks coronavirus isn’t real. That man will be standing near dozens of catchers and batters for 60 games, spitting through his mask every time he incorrectly calls a ball a strike, or vice versa, because who fucking cares he’s got tenure.
How would it all work, anyway?
MLB drafted a 113-page rulebook on how the 2020 season should play out. Its pages read like unenforceable slam poetry about why baseball this year is a bad idea. While the big-wigs in the New York office were writing it, I wonder if any of them stopped to ask “Holy shit, why are we even doing this?” only to be slashed in the back by Rob Manfred with a whip he crafted out of hundred dollar bills. Did it take until page 112 for them to realize how fucking pointless this whole endeavor is?
Rules include: Members of traveling teams cannot leave their hotel room to eat or even go to restaurants. Players are “discouraged but not prohibited” from showering in the clubhouse. Pitchers can’t lick their fingers before each throw. Clubhouse foods must be individually wrapped. Everyone’s gotta be six feet apart in the clubhouse or the stands. Managers who rush to argue the umps have to shout from six feet away or face penalties and ejection.
No fighting, no spitting, no tobacco, no sunflower seeds. No fans in the stands. (Markakis specifically cited the lack of fans as a big reason he wouldn’t be playing this year: “We play for the fans. With them not there it’s tough.”)
Guys, let’s just let it go.
Moving past all of the actual trauma and suffering this will (not could) cause, at the very least, we’ll all be victim to endless, unbearable Fox Sports “We’re All In This Together” propaganda trailers during every fucking commercial break. I refuse to be aurally euthanized by Joe Buck every goddamn inning.
We could go back and forth all day about why we’re even trying to play baseball this year. Is Rob Manfred an incompetent dickwaggle who can’t decide if he loves or hates baseball? (Spoiler: it’s the latter.) Was it the owners who, to protect their already overstuffed pocketbooks, spent weeks negotiating down every players’ union request, a bitter labor dispute that will last for years beyond COVID? Do the majority of players really want to play that bad?
Who the fuck cares. It no longer matters.
Baseball at its best is a beautiful, unifying achievement. A 2-strike count in a tie game, bottom of the ninth, can raise 30,000 people in unison. Without realizing it, you’re on your feet. Highway hypnosis. It’s majestic muscle memory.
Baseball at its worst, apparently, is when it is forced upon us in this dangerous and depressing time. It’s empty stadiums. It’s coaches and players worried about their health on a daily basis. It’s the legitimate fear of lost life. For what, a game? Now isn’t the time to play games. But here we are anyway.
