Four games. That’s all it took for the 2020 Major League Baseball season to have its first cancellations on account of a coronavirus breakout, as the Miami Marlins are the first team to have an outbreak of COVID-19 cases, after 20+ team personnel test positive. Effective immediately, numerous home games were cancelled for both themselves, as well as the Phillies, the last team they played prior to the announcement, and MLB will have a great time trying to figure out how to re-work all these cancelled games into their already abbreviated 60-game season.
Honestly, it’s about as surprising as finding out that dogs like to sniff butts that this happened so quickly. Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t take two games before the first cases started to happen, but then again considering MLB said that testing would only take place every other day, who’s to say it didn’t, but then there was a grace period of a day in between?
Anyway, this is just a microcosm of how fun the rest of this season is going to become, because as far as I can tell, from what I’ve heard is that there will be many more double-headers played this year to accommodate the crunch of games, and much like the Toronto Blue Jays will have to endure, since the entire country of Canada basically won’t let them back in, many of them will have re-jiggered to where the opposite team will be designated as the home teams, on the road. I guess when there are no fans in the stands, it definitely makes the venues feel a little bit more neutral, but baseball players are neurotic weirdoes sometimes, so who knows how they’ll react to batting last in someone else’s ballparks.
Oh, and the double-header games will all be 7-inning games – just like in the minor leagues, which is an appropriate comp at this point, considering how bush league the season is becoming.
SO, this just opens up the door more for the possibility of some wonky seasons; I hope by the time we’re nearing the end of the 60-game season, the Seattle Mariners will clinch the AL West in Houston, where they’re the home team against the Astros at Minute Maid Park, and some guy from their taxi squad hits a walk-off homerun. It would be the perfect beginning of their playoff run to their inevitable World Series date with the Pittsburgh Pirates.