Waiting out COVID
Aaron Judge greets Giancarlo Stanton (27) after Stanton homers in empty stadium on baseball’s first game back during the COVID-19 season of 2020
With COVID-19 already wiping out nearly all of the first four months of the season, Major League Baseball finally opens its 2020 season four years ago today with the New York Yankees beating the Washington Nationals 4-1 in D.C.
Until now, baseball-starving fans in North America have appointment television with the Korean Baseball Organization.
Really, who can turn down a 6 a.m. wakeup call to watch ESPN’s coverage of that day’s between, say, the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes and Hanwha Eagles?
For a few months, those games from South Korea are the only ones available to watch in North America.
That ends four years ago today with the Yankees playing an interleague game on a Thursday night in Washington.
The Phanatic with cardboard fans in Philadelphia during the 2020 season
As is the case throughout Major League Baseball’s 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.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s first pitch … sort of
“I’d rather be playing baseball than not,” Scherzer says after the game. “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 ballplayer.
Fauci’s delivery never reaches 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.”