In a phone call with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred late last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pitched a line of thinking that’s as dangerous as it is false, but seems to be all around us.
In his own words, McConnell said “America needs baseball. It’s the sign of getting back to normal. Any chance?”, he says he asked Manfred. “It would be a great morale booster for the country and an indication that we’re going to begin to get back to normal.”
As we enter another month of lockdown in the United States, “getting back to normal” is an idea that we’ve become obsessed with, and, because it’s springtime in America, the focus seems to be on return of baseball. Across the country, states are relaxing their stay at home orders and opening back up (some at the pressure of the President) even though they don’t meet the basic guidelines set by the White House itself. There seems to be a crawling towards “normalcy” even though not much has actually changed since we entered our self-isolation periods in early March.
Testing across the America is still abysmal, health care workers still lack access to desperately needed PPE, infection rates across the country are still going up, and yet, a very loud, very visible faction of political leaders desperatly want to reframe our current state of crisis as the beginning of the end, when in fact, the end is nowhere in sight.
Opening up baseball stadiums again won’t herald the end of the pandemic, no matter how many convoluted steps and safety measures get put in place. Simply hearing the crack of the bat, even in an empty stadium, won’t put a dent in the actual problems we still have to endure as a nation. There is massive unemployment, an overburdened health care system and crippling economic failure around the corner. Trying to lull Americans into a false sense of safety by pandering to some nostalgic ideal is only going to harm more people than it saves.
In the New York Times, MLB attorney Scott Boras preached about the necessity of bringing back the national pastime because America needed it or some other garbage. Honestly, I got so fed up with the empty speechifying I stopped reading it. Baseball is not a solution. It is not a panacea for the coronavirus.
The truth is that our return to normalcy is still far in the feature, no matter how badly we want it to happen now. Unless there are real advances made in testing or in a vaccine, there is no reliably safe way to open up sports again, even in empty stadiums. Despite leaders who are eager to take premature and unearned victory laps, opening up ballparks or arenas prematurely are going to have unintended and likely disastrous consequences.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that it’s feasible that baseball could come back with empty stadiums, but that’s if players are properly tested and isolated. He also told The New York Times that because he hasn’t seen testing ramp up, some sports may have to cancel their seasons.
Having baseball again, or any sports for that matter, should be our reward for actually doing the hard work of dealing with a global health crisis. Pushing for a return of baseball is empty, political theater. The only reason South Korea is able to get the KBO league underway is because they, as a country, have capable political leadership that’s been able to curb the spread of the virus. As of April 30, South Korea reported no new cases of COVID-19, and they have access to rapid testing plus employ extensive contact tracing.
The US has none of that.
Yet, by now, we’ve resigned ourselves to the notion that for many of us to get back to our way of life, people will have to die. Those people that will die are going to be mostly of color, and mostly poor. They’ll be the ones who have no choice but to continue to work because choosing to not do so would mean destitution.
This is the bargain we’re making when we clamor for a return of sports, even with all the mitigation protocols put in place. It is us slowly trying to rationalize our “new normal,” gaslighting ourselves into thinking that sure, some people are sacrificing their lives, but it’s worth it so the rest of us can watch some dingers.
As the weather gets warmer and the days get longer, a loud, politically motivated chorus of people will continue to call for baseball to come back, as if throwing out the first pitch would magically make up for the country’s woefully inadequate pandemic response.
Sports can be a welcome distraction but what it shouldn’t do is serve as a reason to put your head in the sand. The problems facing us are real, scary and dangerous. Baseball won’t make them go away.