By: Mike Carter
This week, the avid baseball fans among us should have been preparing for Opening Day. We should be getting those fantasy baseball lineups ready to go. We should be mulling over who our favorite team’s fifth starter will be, or who the 26th (yes, a spot was added to rosters this year) man will be.
Instead, the world faces far greater issues. All of us are at war with a global pandemic called COVID-19 that threatens to explode at any moment. Our dedicated and seemingly tireless medical personnel fight on the front lines, and many of us scramble to identify ways to help from home. Several of my coworkers and neighbors are making masks for our doctors and nurses. Many businesses are conforming to this new normal and doing the same.
As a world, we are facing challenges: staying home, avoiding community events, and grocery shopping once a week. Among us, there are malcontents and imbeciles who have ransacked stores, grabbing pounds of meat, all the toilet paper, milk, taking staples away from people (mind, their neighbors much of the time) and hoarding these things.
The thing that is fascinating about this is both how little and how much control we have over things. At the end of the day, all we can really control are attitudes and actions. Is it fun to live without the things we love and take for granted for always having, like baseball? Or maybe our work? If you are sheltered in place with family, like millions of us are, the struggle is real. We balance our work with the schoolwork of our kids and their needs at inopportune times; in middle of a Zoom call the other day, my son wanted breakfast. I waved him off, but then said to him, you can do this yourself. It was a great learning opportunity for Jack, and I made sure to capitalize on it.
I am using the time to read novels and anything that interests me. I went to our library last week and checked out a dozen movies that I wanted to share with my kids. I did complete a couple of fantasy drafts, too. The point of this is that being forced home made me realize the enemy that time is in our daily lives. Even though I am working from home now, I have more time there than I have had in years. I can do one of two things, in essence: I can sulk about how crummy it is, or I can use the time in some better fashion. So I work 5-6 hours per day, but have a bunch of extra hours that I have not had while often working ten hour days. I saw this the other day: when we rush to return to normal, what parts of normal are worth rushing back to? Great question and one that we all will consider, but I know baseball will be part of any “normal” I return to.
I miss baseball. It’s been tough without it in my life, as in many of our lives. Watching old games on MLB Network just isn’t the same, even if it was a great game. Each game is its own entity in my mind, its own schema. All of my fantasy league drafts are done. I look at the rosters each day, adjusting my fake team to not play any games that day. I know this sounds trivial in light of everything happening to all of us that we have no control over. But I miss it; it’s a huge part of my routine at this time of year. Baseball is my oldest friend.
I provide myself therapy by engaging in baseball conversation on social media (Twitter is far better for that; if you want to follow me on Twitter my handle is @mdrc0508) and wondering how many MLB pitchers have had Tommy John surgery. Anything to pass a little time. What are you doing to pass the time?
• In more pressing baseball news, today Bob Nightengale reported that teams will be allowed 29-man rosters during the first month of what will be an abbreviated season. Interesting. My initial take on this is that this will help pitchers manage their workloads as they build up their strength and stamina. This is a good idea.
• Joel Sherman reported today that MLB is thinking about expanded playoffs starting this year, and not 2022. There is a consideration of a 14 team format. In quick summary, the top team in each league would get a first-round bye. All other teams would play a three game series in order to advance to the next round. While I don’t like the idea of 14 of 30 teams making the playoffs, I understand it as a way to keep teams from tanking for years at a time, and a way to increase revenue for the sport. Revenue drives everything, everywhere. And I can see why they would want to start this year: no games means no revenue, and the possibility of playing before no fans (which is being discussed) for a period of time means again, no revenue. This might allow owners to recoup some of this lost revenue in 2020, which is why it makes sense that these discussions are ongoing.
• And in maybe the best news of all, MLB and the players’ union have agreed to a new deal after hashing out details on salaries, service time, roster construction and moves, and the draft. If agreed to, that means no work stoppage. I guess that’s a silver lining of not playing right now; it gave MLB and the players’ union time to work this stuff out.
Hang in there and I hope we will be talking baseball really soon!