Rockinghorse wrote:Looks like MLB has a testing plan ready to go via lab in Utah. This is the most specific plan I've seen for a US sports org. Also Manfred explicit that two-week quarantine won't necessarily be required for anyone...if they test negative twice in a 24-hour period, they are clear.

For all the people who break out the "what about the rest of us" argument, and there will be millions, I would refer you to every relief package passed by the government this year, or American tax policy in general. Or any American policy in general. Like it or not, there is a pecking order.

Eem wrote:

Rockinghorse wrote:Looks like MLB has a testing plan ready to go via lab in Utah. This is the most specific plan I've seen for a US sports org. Also Manfred explicit that two-week quarantine won't necessarily be required for anyone...if they test negative twice in a 24-hour period, they are clear.

For all the people who break out the "what about the rest of us" argument, and there will be millions, I would refer you to every relief package passed by the government this year, or American tax policy in general. Or any American policy in general. Like it or not, there is a pecking order.

I've got to be honest... I'm utterly stunned that it took this long for one of the sports leagues to invest money in testing. I thought a month ago the NFL would be doing something like this

Even if you don't think it helps, it's cheap PR points

JFLNYC wrote:Just the opposite if the shortage of reagents and physical materials is true.

Bill McNeal wrote:Lol, sixers promo for next season. The team will donate one covid test to first responders for every free throw Joel makes, or depending on availability, Simmons.

What's most striking about Major League Baseball's 67-page health-and-safety protocol outlining an attempt to return amid the coronavirus pandemic isn't its little, snicker-worthy details -- that players won't be able to take Ubers and can't stand shoulder-to-shoulder for the national anthem and, gulp, will be discouraged from postgame showers. It isn't the granularity of the plan, all the way down to the color-coded diagrams showing exactly where personnel should stand and sit in the dugout.

It's the immensity of it all, the right-there-on-paper, brass-tacks accounting of what it looks like to bring back a professional sport in the middle of a global pandemic. It is a logistical clamber, a moonshot requiring the buy-in of parties with multivariate endgames. Over the next four weeks, or six weeks, or however long MLB and the MLB Players Association remain committed to making a 2020 season happen, they will be forced to reckon with the same reality upending the rest of the world: that change, no matter how colossal -- and uncomfortable -- is necessary.

And make no mistake: The change in this proposal is, like its word count and ambition, Brobdingnagian. This is baseball like we've never seen. This, or some bargained evolution of it, is what it takes to have a chance at garnering the support of the broad coalition necessary for any sport to return: the backing of federal, state and local governments; the rubber stamp of local health officials; the buy-in of fans; and the collaboration of players.