Polls: Will there be baseball this year?

To get straight to the point, no.

Or at least there shouldn’t be.

In my opinion — and I don’t intend to be a downer or pessimistic — the Coronavirus crisis is a situation where it’s a better safe than sorry. Look, I would be just as bummed about no baseball for a whole year, too, but for the safety of literally everyone, it’d be for the best.

(I just want to say, I’m not bringing this up just to pile on, I think it’s an interesting conversation on sports and baseball because we’re all experiencing something new together and there’s no definitive answer really. If you want to skip all my opinion stuff, there’s two polls at the end of this that I’m really interested in responses.)

A couple weeks ago, I thought maybe play could start around mid-July — but at this point its hard to imagine that would be feasible, especially with crowds. (Which, as much as I love baseball, baseball without fans wouldn’t be fun. Imagine a walk-off homer and no cheers. Not as much fun.)

As we’ve all heard recently, Sweden isn’t in any kind of lock-down. Their theory, going with heard immunity, is that they will have one wave of Covid-19, then will hit their peak and highest death toll early (a bizarre thing to outright say if you ask me), and that’ll be that. Under this plan, Sweden would have one wave of it, whereas other countries would likely have a second or even third wave of it.

And whatever you think about their no lock-down position (which to me seems reckless), they are likely correct about there being second and third waves in places doing lockdowns.

This seems especially likely to occur, given that we are already talking about re-opening much of society despite the fact that a lot of states, including Texas, likely haven’t reached their peak COVID-19 case rate. Making moves to start allowing groups of people together and eventually in crowds is counterproductive to the goal of flattening the curve. Even if we open up everything following the peak of the curve, a resurgence could result in cases spiking again, ruining any progress made to flatten the curve and not overwhelm hospitals.

Which, of couse, is the whole point of the measures we are currently taking — not necessarily to prevent everyone from getting it but preventing everyone from getting it all at once.

So while, yes, I would love baseball to be back now and would love to see a baseball season, even if it meant coming back with a condensed schedule starting in July (which would be particularly interesting if they didn’t adjust the trade deadline), such a plan seems premature, and not necessarily taking into account the big picture.

Obviously I’m not a doctor or a epidemiologist (really the only professional opinions we should be listening to), just an immunocompromised person who would like to go out with the lowest risk possible and be able to visit my grandma without worrying if I’m gonna give her this virus.

Again, I realize I’m just one more voice in a bunch of voices giving opinions about sports returning but it’s a very weird thing to think about the possibility of no baseball for a year. It’s an interesting conversation and brings up a lot of questions, two of which you can vote on below: