Tag: Mike Trout

Report: Playing in empty stadiums is a possibility for NFL’s 2020 season

The National Football League has reportedly been working on contingency plans for a 2020 season to be played during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of all the major sports, pro football has felt the least impact from the current pandemic. The NFL hasn’t had to cancel games or scrap its postseason tournament. Roger Goodell didn’t have to deal with two teams’ worth of his players walking off the field moments before a big game as a public address announcer asked the fans to just go home. For the NFL and its fans, the only real change that’s been made is the made-for-TV event that is the annual draft, now a virtual affair with GMs calling in from their basements.

But the National Football League is going to have to step out, so to speak, into the shelter-in-place world sooner rather than later. And for all the league’s public lip service that the 2020 campaign is moving ahead exactly as planned, it’s now looking more and more likely that the upcoming NFL season will be anything but normal.

In a piece published Wednesday, The Washington Post‘s Mark Maske and Dave Sheinin report that the league “has been planning for contingencies that include a potentially shortened schedule and holding games in empty or partially filled stadiums.”

The article cites two people familiar with the NFL’s planning.

“I don’t know if it’ll be a one-third-filled stadium, a half-filled stadium or whatever,” said one of them, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The NFL is planning for everything from playing without fans to playing in full stadiums. We know there will be a push from the [federal] government to open things up.”

As previously announced, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is among the high-profile sports commissioners and owners who has been asked by President Trump to assist in his push to re-open the country and the American economy.

Trump and his team spoke by phone on Wednesday. While no significant details of that call had been made public at the time of this writing, hockey insider Darren Dreger of Canadian channel The Sports Network was able to provide a bit of insight as to the overall direction of the conversation.

“We want to get our country open again,” the president said in a news conference Wednesday. “We want to have our sports leagues open. You want to watch sports. It’s important. We miss sports.”

“We have to get our sports back,” he said on Tuesday. “I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old.”

The NFL has not commented on any specific contingency plans for the upcoming season, but did say in a written statement to The Washington Post:

“As we have said, we are committed to protecting the health of our fans, players, club and league personnel, and communities. We look forward to the 2020 NFL season, and our guidelines and decisions will be guided by the latest advice from medical and public health officials, as well as current and future government regulations. We will continue to plan for the season and will be prepared to adjust as necessary, just as we have done with free agency, the draft, and now the offseason program.”

The 2020 regular season schedule is expected to be released around May 9, and will reportedly allow for the possibility of a delayed start to the season and the possible cancellation of games.

The Post source did make the point, however, that “‘the other leagues have to go first,’ referring to MLB, the NBA and the NHL.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the scientific spokesperson of record for millions of Americans regarding COVID-19, has already outlined a potential strategy for those other leagues to resume play this summer by isolating players and other essential personnel in a protective “bubble” with frequent testing.

“There’s a way of doing that,” said Fauci. “Nobody comes to the stadium. Put [players and other personnel] in big hotels, wherever you want to play, keep them very well surveilled [and] have them tested like every week, and make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family, and just let them play the season out… If you could get on television, Major League Baseball, to start July 4 [even if] nobody comes to the stadium — you just, you do it.”

But with some areas of the country displaying more virus activity than others, it could be up to authorities for each stadium location to make the call on how feasible that would be.

Dr. Jeffrey Smith, the chief executive for California’s Santa Clara County, has said it will take “a major miracle” for the NFL season to begin on time at Levi’s Stadium, where the 49ers play. According to ESPN, Dr. Smith went on to say that “for sports to resume even without fans… the county will need assurances not only that the coronavirus is contained but that cities where visiting teams live also are following safe distancing.”

MLB’s Mike Trout spoke with NBCSN about a “bubble” plan like the one Dr. Fauci proposed.

“I obviously want to play as fast as we can,” Trout said as per The Washington Post. “But [being self-isolated] would be difficult for some guys. What are you going to do with family members? My wife is pregnant. What am I going to do if she goes into labor? Am I going to have to go into quarantine for two weeks after I come back? Because obviously, I can’t miss the birth of our first child.

“So there’s a lot of red flags, a lot of questions. Obviously, we’d have to agree as players. But I think the mentality is, we want to get back as soon as we can. But obviously, it’s got to be realistic. We can’t just be sitting in a hotel room, just going from the field to the hotel room and not being able to do anything. I think that’s pretty crazy.”

One has to believe that many NFL players and team personnel would echo that sentiment.

Baseball players would at least get to escape that bubble for a game (albeit a surreal one in an empty ballpark) five or six nights a week. Sequestering 32 full NFL rosters in hotels and letting them out for three hours every Sunday just so football fans can pretend- perhaps while still quarantined at home- that things are back to normal seems, as Trout puts it, pretty crazy.

Maybe even crazier than just scrapping the 2020 season outright.

Mike Trout said that MLB’s idea to play isolated baseball in Arizona was ‘pretty crazy’

“There’s a lot of red flags.”

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the only way the Major League Baseball season can happen during the coronavirus pandemic would be by taking extreme measures to play games behind closed doors.

Last week, a possible plan that MLB considered went public that involved relocating the entire league to the Phoenix area and having the games take place at the city’s 10 spring training parks, two collegiate stadiums (ASU and GCU) and the Diamondbacks’ Chase Field as soon as May. Entire organizations would have to be confined to hotels, tested regularly for the coronavirus and live months in isolation.

The reaction to the idea was mixed from fans to players, and we can count Mike Trout among those skeptical of the plan.

In an interview with NBC Sports, Trout called the idea “pretty crazy.”

Trout said:

“I obviously want to play as fast as we can. Get to a city, maybe Arizona — they’re throwing out Florida. Being quarantined in a city … it would be difficult for some guys. What are you gonna do with family members? My wife is pregnant. What am I gonna do when she goes into labor? Am I going to have to quarantine for two weeks after I come back? Because obviously I can’t miss that birth of our first child. There’s a lot of red flags, a lot of questions. Obviously, we would have to agree on it as players. But I think the mentality is we want to get back as soon as we can, but obviously it’s gotta be realistic. We can’t be sitting in a hotel room, just going from the field to the hotel room and not being able to do anything. I think that’s pretty crazy.”

On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases — voiced some support for the feasibility of the Arizona idea. But the U.S. would need to increase its testing capacity before the thousands of MLB players and staff members could responsibly get tested on a daily or even weekly basis.

Fauci also said that players would have to be “very well surveilled,” which didn’t seem to fly with Trout.

The brutal Arizona heat — where summer temperatures stay over 100 degrees even late at night — would also present a less-than-ideal playing experience under this scenario.

But if baseball does happen in 2020, this might be the only way.

[jwplayer qBsQAeun-q2aasYxh]

See Mike Trout, Steph Curry and other athletes nail golf trick shots

This is a good way to pass some time at home.

With nothing much to do as the coronavirus pandemic continues and pro and amateur athletes are staying home due to social distancing, we’ve seen some of them resort to keeping themselves busy with some creativity.

Specifically, they’re turning to golf and becoming viral video stars by trying out some wild trick shots in their backyards or in their houses, and it’s a reminder that even if you play basketball or baseball or hockey, you can still be really, really good at golf (and as someone who wants to be really, really good at golf, I’m jealous).

Here are some of the shots:

Mike Trout

Steph Curry

Mardy Fish

Jake Elliott

Elias Pettersson (this one is funny)

View this post on Instagram

Elias Pettersson: Multi-Sport Athlete 😂 . (📽: @_eliaspettersson)

A post shared by TSN (@tsn_official) on

I’m sure there are more of these to come.

[vertical-gallery id=903874]

[jwplayer Wz8GgaKs-q2aasYxh]

Like many of us, LeBron James is missing sports

The Los Angeles Lakers star shared a video that made him a little emotional on Friday afternoon about the world’s stoppage amid coronavirus.

Listen, it’s not easy out there. In the past, even during the most difficult times over the years, we’ve had sports. But due to the immediate need to practice social distancing in these times, leading to lay-offs nationwide, the distraction of a new sports match is impossible to find in the United States. With that on a lot of people’s minds, Major League Baseball shared a video on Friday of moments in which fans and players interacted with each other over the past few years, showing the connection the game can foster among us in order to try and cheer us up.

That message got to LeBron James, who shared the video himself on Friday, sadly mentioning how he misses his sports.

Not only can we not watch sports, many of us, especially those of us who love team sports, cannot even play them. Such is the cost of slowing down the coronavirus, something that James has acknowledged is a necessary one. Still, it doesn’t mean we can’t miss what’s been a daily part of our lives.

[lawrence-related id=28382,28385]

 

Watch: MLB stars Mike Trout, Cody Bellinger crush golf balls

Mike Trout is crushes a drive at Topgolf and it’s a viral video sensation.

Wanna see Mike Trout launch a golf ball to the moon?

What about Dodgers rising star Cody Bellinger?

The two Major League Baseball stars were among several players swinging for the fences at a Scottsdale, Arizona, Topgolf facility on Sunday.

They were all there for an event sponsored by The Pujols Family Foundation, a non-profit run by Angels’ slugger Albert Pujols and his wife which, according to their site, “focuses on Faith, Family and Others.”

Trout, a five-tool player on the diamond, proves that he can crank a driver as well. His reaction to the moonshot is pretty solid, too: A little flex followed by a huge ear-to-ear smile.

Bellinger also showed off his swing.

The lefty has a nice, slow takeaway and then lets it rip.

Trout and the Angels hold spring training in Tempe, while Bellinger and the Dodgers share a facility in Glendale with the White Sox.

With three more weeks of spring training, there’s a better than good chance Trout will be somewhere in Arizona sending golf balls, and baseballs, off into the distance.

[lawrence-related id=777876573]

Mike Trout hit a golf ball a country mile and everyone was rightly in awe

Mike Trout hit this ball to the moon.

Major League Baseball has had a tough spring so far, as the Houston Astros and their cheating ways have dominated the headlines during spring training.

Who can rescue us from all of that bad news and bring us back to some fun baseball stuff to marvel at?

Mike Trout, of course.

Well, I guess this isn’t technically baseball, since he’s hitting a golf ball at one of those fun Topgolf places, but it is still a lot of fun to watch the best player in MLB hit a golf ball to the moon.

Check out this video of Trout hitting an absolute bullet that still might be in the air as I type this:

I mean, come on. Sure, he might have pulled it a little left but that is a ridiculous rope by the 3-time AL MVP.

Twitter was impressed:

[jwplayer WX8Jio0J-q2aasYxh]

[lawrence-auto-related count=3]

Mike Trout destroyed the Astros for cheating, thinks the punishments were weak

“I lost some respect for some guys.”

The heat on the Houston Astros is only being turned up as other star players and teams report to spring training. Questions are being asked and hoo boy are opposing player giving their opinions on the cheating scandal that helped lead the Astros to a World Series win in 2017.

One of those players who didn’t shy away from talking about the Astros is Mike Trout, who is arguably the very best player in the game.

[lawrence-related id=895740]

Trout stepped out of his normal, bland self and took a number of pointed shots at the Astros on Monday, which says a lot.

Here’s what the three-time MVP had to say, via ESPN:

“It’s sad for baseball,” Trout said. “It’s tough. They cheated. I don’t agree with the punishments, the players not getting anything. It was a player-driven thing. It sucks, too, because guys’ careers have been affected, a lot of people lost jobs. It was tough. Me going up to the plate knowing what was coming — it would be pretty fun up there.”

“I lost some respect for some guys,” Trout said. “… All the stuff coming out, it’s tough to see.”

None of players who cheated, of course, were punished by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, which is absurd.

Here’s video Trout’s meeting with the media:

He also added:

Rob Manfred and MLB are going to continue to look really bad for how this whole thing has been handled.

Which is just great.