The return of Major League Baseball took a troubling turn on Monday when the league’s worst fear became reality: an outbreak of positive coronavirus tests within a team.
The Miami Marlins postponed their home opener against the Baltimore Orioles on Monday — four days after the season opener — after learning that 14 members of the team’s traveling party, including two coaches, had tested positive for the virus. The outbreak was first reported by ESPN.
“The health of our players and staff has been and will continue to be our primary focus as we navigate through these uncharted waters,” Derek Jeter, the Marlins’ chief executive, said in a statement. “After a successful Spring 2.0, we have now experienced challenges once we went on the road and left Miami. Postponing tonight’s home opener was the correct decision to ensure we take a collective pause and try to properly grasp the totality of this situation.”
Jeter said the Marlins would remain in Philadelphia, where they played three games against the Phillies over the weekend, while awaiting the results of another round of testing for players and staff. The Phillies were scheduled to host the Yankees on Monday, but that game was also postponed.
The Marlins played two exhibition games in Atlanta last week before their series at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, including Sunday’s series finale, which was played after Miami learned that four players had tested positive. Manager Don Mattingly changed starting pitchers for that game — replacing Jose Urena, who had reportedly tested positive — but told reporters later that the team “never really considered not playing.”
As games began for most teams on Friday, M.L.B. announced that only six of 10,939 samples it had conducted that week (or .05 percent) had been new positives. But most of those tests had been conducted while teams were training at their home parks, before traveling to road sites.
The league is attempting to stage a 60-game season using 30 stadiums across the United States, including a Class AAA ballpark in Buffalo for the Toronto Blue Jays, who were barred from playing home games by the Canadian government because of the risk of travel to and from the United States.
Baseball’s decision to play games at home sites stands apart from the N.B.A. and the N.H.L., which are preparing to resume play in so-called bubbles. The N.B.A. is housing players and holding games at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., while the N.H.L. is using two sites: Toronto for Eastern Conference teams and Edmonton for teams in the Western Conference.
Those leagues are also using fewer teams than M.L.B.; both were deep into their seasons when sports shut down in mid-March, so the N.H.L. plans to move directly to the playoffs, with 24 of 31 teams taking part, while the N.B.A. plan involves 22 of its 30 teams.
In an interview with The New York Times in May, Rob Manfred, the M.L.B. commissioner, outlined the challenges of where and how to stage a season.
“One of the things that floated up from one of the experts is, ‘Gee whiz, a way that you can do this is to quarantine players,’” Manfred said, adding later, “And then you’re going to start a four-and-a-half-month season, and your life is going to be hotel to ballpark, back to hotel, room service, not see your family.
“So then we realized, gee, that’s pretty tough. So then we started talking about including families, and you realize as you get into that phase that you get into quarantine numbers that are insane.”
Manfred said M.L.B. considered holding games in three hubs: Arizona for teams in the West divisions, Texas for teams in the Central and Florida for teams in the East.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 27, 2020
Should I refinance my mortgage?
- It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.
What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
Is the coronavirus airborne?
- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
“That makes sense because those states seem to be more receptive to letting us play,” Manfred said.
But as baseball considered that plan, the spread of the virus ebbed in some parts of the country, and businesses began to reopen. Baseball then shifted its focus to playing in stadiums with no fans while following extensive health and safety protocols. To reduce travel, teams would play only within their geographic divisions.
Yet reduced travel is still travel, with all it entails — flights, bus rides, checking in and out of hotels, hauling equipment from clubhouse to clubhouse, and so on — and even as the league prepared to start play, it understood the risk of positive tests. Some of the official safety rules seemed unrealistic and have been routinely broken, such as the ban on high-fiving and spitting, strict social distancing in the dugout and replacing any ball touched by multiple players.
With player availability inevitably in flux because of the virus, teams are carrying 30 active players (instead of the usual 26), with a pool of 30 additional players available at an alternate training site near home ballparks.
But the idea was to provide coverage for a stray absence or two, not an outbreak like the one the Marlins are experiencing. The league has known all along that such an outcome could be devastating.
“If we have a team or two that’s really decimated with a number of people who had the virus and can’t play for any significant period of time, it could have a real impact on the competition,” Manfred said July 2 on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “And we’d have to think very, very hard about what we’re doing.”
That day has arrived quickly, giving Manfred and the owners a new crisis to confront on their scheduled weekly phone call on Monday afternoon.
James Wagner contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/sports/baseball/marlins-game-canceled.html
2020-07-27 19:41:00Z
52780953932067
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Miami Marlins Outbreak Postpones 2 Games and Rocks M.L.B.’s Return - The New York Times"
Post a Comment