D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports
A health expert can answer so many questions, can analyze COVID-19 like Bill Belichick dissects defenses, can explain in detail the advantages of social distancing to talk even the most social creature back into the house.
But as far as when society — in particular, Major League Baseball — can and should return to at least a strain of normalcy, it can become less scientific and more philosophical.
“It depends on how you define ‘feasible,’” Rand McClain, a regenerative and sports medicine doctor based in Santa Monica, said when asked if MLB’s all-around-Arizona plan is feasible. “There’s no 100 percent safe way to [ensure you don’t get the virus] without being locked up. If you’re going to go out there and play baseball, you’re going to assume some risk. Can you reduce the risk to where you feel comfortable?
“… What are you prepared to do? The first thing you have to decide is where is the line. What’s the amount of risk you’re willing to take?”
That will be the question that major league owners and players wrestle with in the coming weeks as the two sides debate the importance of the TV money — which would be huge at a time when there are no live sports and the public is desperate — and the health risks before there is a coronavirus vaccine.
While there is not a cure for the infectious disease that has slowed the world, there is significant momentum for testing. MLB could start with antibody testing for all players, a blood test that shows if you’ve been infected and thus determines who is believed to be immune. Those without the antibodies could be tested before each game, McClain conjectured, using PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) kits that soon will be more easily available.
The kits and testing would be expensive, but the profits would be big, too. Quarantining the players, only allowing them to go from hotel to ballpark and back and believing they will be mostly safe from outbreak is possible. Of course, you would also need to test the hotel staff, the people around the clubhouse, the chefs — all the previously anonymous folk who still come into contact with players all the time. There are so many people to consider if baseball wants to open up before the country does.
The game itself may have to change, too. The virus is easiest spread through infected droplets landing on surfaces that humans then touch, then proceed to touch their face. While so many sports are resistant to hygiene, baseball may be king, pitchers so often blowing on their hands, licking their fingers, then throwing a ball that could be touched by anyone next.
Maybe “you put some form of helmet or mask on a player,” McClain suggested over the phone Friday. “So when there is a slide into home plate and the runner [slides] into the catcher, maybe [N]95 masks for everybody to help protect that.”
And maybe latex gloves for all. Batting gloves will come in, well, handy.
And baseball could have “very strict rules about manager and ump confrontation,” McClain joked.
While it’s being termed as a plan, it’s less coordinated and more flung against the wall. Baseball wants to explore every possible crevice to see if it’s possible to begin play while the rest of the country waits inside.
ESPN reported all 30 teams could be sequestered in Arizona — while the players could sit in the empty stands a safe distance from one another. USA Today passed along a reorganization of the leagues, dissolving AL and NL and grouping teams by spring training sites, thus having half the league in Florida and half in Arizona.
There are other considerations to take into account in both plans, including an unrelenting sun in the middle of the summer.
There is not much known about whether heat can and will kill off the virus from surfaces, but “the dryness in Arizona would not be helpful,” McClain said. “The virus does worse in a humid environment.”
If it sounds as if MLB is trying to thread a needle, well, it might be the only major sport able to find an even vaguely plausible needle.
“When you look at baseball as opposed to … contact sports,” McClain said, “You’ve got a better chance of minimizing it.”