TD Ameritrade Park Omaha (Aaron Fitt)
None of us have ever experienced anything like these frenetic last 48 hours. The word “surreal” doesn’t begin to describe it. Once the floodgates opened, the tidal wave of COVID-19-induced cancelations and season suspensions has been dizzying; disconcerting; frightening. Many of us have had our eyes glued to our Twitter feeds, watching the news crash over us in real time, one jarring update followed by another and another, coming so rapidly we can’t even keep up.
First the Ivy League canceled all of its sporting events for the remainder of the spring. Some people immediately denounced the move as a rash overreaction. A day later, after a string of cancelations and suspensions rippled through the sporting world, the SEC has suspended all sports until at least March 30; the Pac-12 has canceled all sporting events “until further notice”; the Horizon and Colonial and Conference USA and Mountain West have suspended their seasons. By the end of the day, I expect all college sports will be on hiatus, at minimum.
It will take time for all of us to process all of this news. Clearly, containing this pandemic is the top priority for everyone, and that containment effort transcends sports. Indeed, sports feel insignificant in times like these.
It’s fair to recognize that reality, and still feel sadness over the disruption and possible loss of the college baseball season. It’s sad for the players and coaches who have invested so much time and hard work and emotional capital into this season. It’s sad for fans who care about college baseball, even if they recognize that other things are more important. It’s sad for us at D1Baseball. Like all of you, we recognize that talking about college baseball right now probably seems trivial — but we write about this sport for a living, so we might as well attempt to process this crisis through the college baseball lens.
These events raise so many questions that are impossible to answer. It feels inevitable that the entire college baseball season will be paused, at the least. Will it resume at all in 2020? Will there be a College World Series? If so, will it be pushed back into the summer? Nobody knows anything.
How will this affect the draft? Will there be a draft? If there is, will pro teams shy away from selecting unproven high school players they haven’t gotten nearly enough looks at, sending a wave of premium talent into the college ranks? If the season gets canceled, will players be granted an extra year of eligibility? How will scholarships be handled? How do you make room for incoming players if you allow players whose seasons were cut short to return for another year on scholarship?
Nobody knows anything.
All we can do is hope the spread of coronavirus slows dramatically. It’s inevitable that it will spread — that’s how pandemics work. But can we as a society get this thing under control in time to bring some normalcy back into our everyday lives later in the spring? If so, the return of college baseball would be just one small piece of that return to normalcy, and we would be grateful for it.
What happens to the people whose livelihoods depend upon athletics? What happens to the support staff, the stadium workers, the vendors, the people who work for hotels and airlines and rental car agencies? We can only hope employers will do everything they can to support these people. We can only hope all of these businesses remain afloat financially so that they are able to support their workers. We can only hope the government figures out how to buttress that support.
This threat must be taken seriously, and college administrators are handling it in appropriate fashion. It’s not about the risk any one of us in particular faces, but how we take responsibility for the care of our communities. It would be awful if a game we all love turned into a venue for harming our communities by spreading this disease.
This is a time to hit the pause button on our lives, not just on the college baseball season. It is time to stay home with loved ones as much as we are able, to reflect on what is really important, and to hope.
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March 13, 2020 at 12:22AM
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Fitt: Processing The Full Impact Of Coronavirus Won't Be Easy - D1 Baseball College Baseball News & Scores
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