There will be spit.
It's baseball, it's going to happen.
They will spit. They will high-five. They will slap each other on the back and on the backside.
They are ballplayers, being put back into their natural habitat.
Dozens of Major League Baseball's planned precautions have been reported, as the league and players look to play part of the 2020 season during the coronavirus pandemic. But reading these precautions, you have to think that some of it's just to sound good to the public. Sanitation vanity. A way to come off looking safe. Who will enforce these precautions? Who will tell a ballplayer not to spit or high-five? That's the thing _ once baseball games get going, baseball will be baseball. Day by day, one more player will take one more little risk. Within a couple months, on the field with precise dimensions, these other lines will be blurred.
And the question is, is it really a big deal if players do this? Or, is it the biggest deal? It's like _ it's not a big deal, it's just a silly little high-five ... until the whole infield gets coronavirus. Baseball is a microcosm of our world _ we're getting back to normal, time has passed, but we can't behave completely "normal," because we still have to be super-crazy safe with preventing the possible spread of a disease that we don't even know if we have.
But really, with baseball sustaining this season, it comes down to the one "mandate" they'll determine privately: What's the minimum amount of players that have to get the coronavirus to shut down all the games? They're not going to say that publicly. They might not have even determined an exact number or have privately answered the question. But it's the sobering, lingering thing as we jump back into all this.
It's been reported that if one guy gets it, they're not going to shut the league down. They'll quarantine the ballplayer (or team employee) for a certain amount of days. The difference between now and when the NBA's Rudy Gobert tested positive, of course, is there are all these precautionary measures already going on. Per reports from ESPN and The Athletic, baseball plans to do as many 10,000 coronavirus tests a week. Temperatures will be taken twice daily. They'll do their best. But will their best be the best?
All it takes is one bad apple, one ballplayer bringing in a friend from out of town or choosing to hang around a large group of people. The nature of the ballplayer is to be cocky. To feel impervious, impenetrable, immune. Some guys think they can get away with things because of who they are. Not all. Some. Of course, hundreds of ballplayers will follow the guidelines. But if one doesn't, and he gets the coronavirus, and then spreads it to even the most rule-abiding teammate, then suddenly the Cardinals are out a couple players before a key series against the Cubs. And _ bigger than baseball, these couple Cardinals now have a virus that has killed more than 90,000 Americans. And _ back to baseball, you can still play the Cubs without two Cardinals, but what if six Cardinals get the coronavirus? Twelve? At what point do you have to shut down the St. Louis Cardinals? And thus, is that when they shut it all down?
Yes, as we play out these scenarios, some seem far-fetched. And moreover, we acknowledge that these are the risks _ the risks baseball will take, just as society will take, until there is a vaccine. A lot of Americans, from baseball players to baseball fans, are in this quandary. How do you remain being safe and socially distanced but begin to assimilate into regular life? You can handle it as precociously or precautiously as possible, of course. But that's not human nature. Or at least a lot of people's human nature. It's _ get an inch, take a foot. It's a ballplayer rationalizing that "baseball is trying to show America we're getting back normal, and you know what, a high-five is normal, a spit is normal, and what's the big deal?"
That's the thing. There are so many "what's the big deals" going on in the minds of people right now. The devil and the angel on each shoulder, even for the smallest little decisions in life. It's been two months, do I need to wash my hands for a 20 full seconds? Do I need to stay six full feet away from someone in a line? The numbers are going down, right? So with baseball, it's like all these little personal inner decisions will be played out in real time, while the guys are also playing an extremely pressurized and competitive team sport. Baseball is fun for us, but it's not always fun to play _ this is a pressurized job with egos and reputations and careers on the line. It's such a hard game to succeed at, that once they're in that baseball world, the safety precautions might be seen as irrelevant inconveniences.
So yeah, as we approach Independence Day for both America and its national pastime, we ask questions such as _ is the high-five a little thing and it really shouldn't matter, or is it the biggest thing and one high-five could ruin a team or a season? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The truth is unknown. So all they can do is the best they can do _ they being the league executives, the team executives, the team employees and the players themselves. Because _ to mix sports metaphors _ there's no playbook for how to make baseball 100-percent safe in a pandemic.
