Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, is reportedly open to allowing games at TD Garden and Fenway Park this summer with one big, fat asterisk involved:
No fans will be allowed to attend.
This is likely a moot point for the Boston Celtics as the NBA is leaning heavily towards a single-site location for all 30 teams to convene and finish the season, or possibly two sites along a similar line of thinking — namely reducing risk by eliminating travel.
But the possibility for home games is at least on the table for Boston even if it doesn’t elect to take advantage of the possibility, reports the Boston Globe’s Michael Silverman.
Marty Walsh: Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics could host games this summer, but without fans https://t.co/w6xdxNT7l0
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) May 15, 2020
Local venues could be used by teams without audiences “as long as the players and the teams and the support staff and all the people that are associated with it are safe and feel comfortable,” related Walsh via Silverman.
“Obviously, their health is important to me as well. Many of them are constituents of mine, and even if they’re not constituents of mine, I obviously want people to be healthy and safe. That’s going to be the biggest challenge that they’re going to have to figure out and meet if they’re going to move forward here.”
It sounds like the city government is taking a cautious approach prioritizing public safety as a critical element of any such move to restart sports locally.
As leagues in various sports begin to experiment with audience-less games around the world, a greater body of evidence on what to do (and what not to do) will grow.
But until we have a flagship model to draw on for team sports in a pandemic, we’ll be learning as we go, and caution under such a context is undoubtedly wise.
[lawrence-related id=34141,34143,33802,34104]