Waiting out COVID
(Mark Cunningham photo)
With the world trying to deal the outbreak of COVID-19, Major League Baseball announces four years ago today the suspension of spring training, as well as a delay of the scheduled Opening Day on March 26.
MLB officials initially project a delay of over two weeks for Opening Day.
Turns out they miss by more than three months as North American sports leagues like the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League also go on indefinite hiatus because of the pandemic.
The 2020 MLB season finally opens July 23 with the New York Yankees beating the Nationals 4-1 in Washington, D.C.
In between, there are countless pro games from South Korea that become a daily staple for baseball-starved fans in North America.
Really, who can turn down a 6 a.m. wakeup call to watch a game between the Kiwoom Heroes and Hanwha Eagles?
For a few months, those games from the Korean Baseball Organization are the only ones available to watch in North America.
That ends on July 23, 2020 with the return of the major leagues with the Yankees playing an interleague game in Washington.
The Philly Phanatic in 2020 with some of Philadelphia’s finest cardboard fans (Rich Schultz photo)
As is the case throughout the major leagues’ truncated regular season, no fans are in the stands.
Every attendance officially is 0 – not counting those cardboard cutouts teams use to paper the stands as a substitute for fans.
The season’s long-awaited first pitch comes at 7:08 p.m. on July 23, 2020 with Yankees leadoff batter Aaron Hicks grounding out to second baseman Starlin Castro.
Aaron Judge, the next batter, then singles to left field.
Two batters later, Giancarlo Stanton accounts for the season’s first two runs on a two-run, two-out, 459-foot homer to left-center off Nationals starter Max Scherzer.
Scherzer does not seem overly upset by giving up Stanton’s long home run.
“I’d rather be playing baseball than not,” Scherzer says. “That’s the way I look at it.”
The season’s ceremonial first pitch – such as it is – comes from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who thankfully is a far better at being the nation’s top infectious disease expect than he is a pitcher.
Fauci’s delivery goes nowhere near Nationals relief pitcher Sean Doolittle, who is tasked with catching the honorary first pitch.
Doolittle never does catch the would-be pitch, which sails 10 or feet so up the first-base line.
“It’s hard to describe,” Doolittle says of Fauci’s wild pitch. “That’s 2020 in a nutshell.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s first pitch — sort of — to start the 2020 season