MLB 2020: We're Playing, but We Can't Agree on Anything

Salem's Lot

Andy Moog! Andy God Damn Moog!
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Jul 15, 2005
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Gallows Hill
Not to hijack this thread, but speaking of masks, why is it not mandatory NATIONWIDE to wear them; here in MA, we were a hot zone, averaging 1500 new infections a day/150 deaths a day for several weeks, order came down to wear masks in public, our numbers are now hovering around 250/30 for about a week, wearing masks in public certainly helped.

I've been wearing a mask in public for three months, I was doing so before it was required.

Again, pardon me and I don't want to turn a baseball thread into a political discussion, but I won't step foot outside my house without wearing one regardless of what our governor says going forward.
You know the answer. MURICA
 

geoflin

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Not to hijack this thread, but speaking of masks, why is it not mandatory NATIONWIDE to wear them
Ask our President, who not only refuses to wear one himself but yesterday said that some people who do wear one do so to "signal disapproval" of him.
 

grimshaw

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May 16, 2007
4,220
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MLB and the Union need to come to an agreement no matter what. If the virus claims the season, so be it. But they have to be able to agree on this stuff.
The cynic in me (AKA me permanently now) thinks they'll agree to some sort of deal knowing they'll be canceling the season a few weeks later just to save face.
 

Minneapolis Millers

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Jul 15, 2005
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I had a cousin in the Mayo Clinic a few weeks ago. Serious non-COVID illness. Wife and family were not allowed to visit him. “No visitor“ policy. Pence comes, visits, no mask.

Life in America is not fair, on numerous levels.
 

loshjott

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Dec 30, 2004
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Not to hijack this thread, but speaking of masks, why is it not mandatory NATIONWIDE to wear them; here in MA, we were a hot zone, averaging 1500 new infections a day/150 deaths a day for several weeks, order came down to wear masks in public, our numbers are now hovering around 250/30 for about a week, wearing masks in public certainly helped.

I've been wearing a mask in public for three months, I was doing so before it was required.

Again, pardon me and I don't want to turn a baseball thread into a political discussion, but I won't step foot outside my house without wearing one regardless of what our governor says going forward.
There are plenty of threads in V&N discussing this.
 

nattysez

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Sep 30, 2010
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It's just too messy; let's take the NFL for example. Say on Monday of week #2 a player on the Patriots tests positive; so what then, quarantine the team for two weeks and quarantine their opponent from week one for two weeks? So then what; both teams forfeit two games?
More likely you test the whole team and those who are positive get shelved. I think that's the benefit of testing -- you don't have to quarantine people who test clean.

But in a 50-game baseball season, imagine if one of your best guys gets COVID and has to miss 14 games. That's a killer. That issue makes a crapshoot of a season even more random.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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Not to hijack this thread, but speaking of masks, why is it not mandatory NATIONWIDE to wear them; here in MA, we were a hot zone, averaging 1500 new infections a day/150 deaths a day for several weeks, order came down to wear masks in public, our numbers are now hovering around 250/30 for about a week, wearing masks in public certainly helped.

I've been wearing a mask in public for three months, I was doing so before it was required.

Again, pardon me and I don't want to turn a baseball thread into a political discussion, but I won't step foot outside my house without wearing one regardless of what our governor says going forward.
See video in spoiler if you are interested. (For those not interested, please skip.)

This was posted somewhere in V&N but even after having watching it previously, it still gives me the chills.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41KluMgqE9A
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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More likely you test the whole team and those who are positive get shelved. I think that's the benefit of testing -- you don't have to quarantine people who test clean.

But in a 50-game baseball season, imagine if one of your best guys gets COVID and has to miss 14 games. That's a killer. That issue makes a crapshoot of a season even more random.
But even if you test the whole team, you have to shut down operations in the meantime. You can't have football players practicing while their test results are pending. That's a day (or more) with no practices, no runthroughs, no film sessions, no position meetings, no nothing. If it happens during a short week, the team is even more screwed by lack of prep. Same in baseball, if one guy tests positive and the whole team has to be tested, what happens to the game scheduled for that day? Or the team they played the night before? Make-up dates are going to be hard to come by in such a compressed season.

The NBA's bubble plan, despite setting it up in the middle of a current hotspot, probably has the best chance of success, and it still has a ton of weaknesses. And it's just not sustainable over the course of a full season, or even a partial one like MLB is hoping for.
 

P'tucket rhymes with...

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You can "keep the spread to a minimum" and still have 15 players/personnel test positive at once.
Trying to talk twenty-something year old men out of their sense of invulnerability is hard enough; when they happen to be world-class athletes to boot, the job is impossible. Put that mentality in a wild-west, wide open state like AZ and FL, and Shit Will Happen.
 

Gdiguy

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But even if you test the whole team, you have to shut down operations in the meantime. You can't have football players practicing while their test results are pending. That's a day (or more) with no practices, no runthroughs, no film sessions, no position meetings, no nothing. If it happens during a short week, the team is even more screwed by lack of prep. Same in baseball, if one guy tests positive and the whole team has to be tested, what happens to the game scheduled for that day? Or the team they played the night before? Make-up dates are going to be hard to come by in such a compressed season.

The NBA's bubble plan, despite setting it up in the middle of a current hotspot, probably has the best chance of success, and it still has a ton of weaknesses. And it's just not sustainable over the course of a full season, or even a partial one like MLB is hoping for.
I've been barking up this tree for months now - the idea of having a real "2020 season" is ridiculous. Just throw the towel in and do monthly tournaments or something where if one team has to drop out for a week it doesn't matter, they can pick up the next week or next month and come back in. I haven't seen any reasonable idea from really any league on how a team would deal with the quarantines necessary surrounding a player testing positive (and how the league would deal with scheduling issues that it creates). Even in the NFL, which in theory has an easier time due to the week between games, you're very likely to have 1 case turn into the entire offensive line or something, and expecting teams to be able to replace multiple players possibly mid-week is just a joke

I mean it's the same problem that states are having; everyone wants to pretend that a divine power will step in and make things better, rather than actual plan for the likely problems.
 

PseuFighter

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Dec 22, 2003
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What a complete and utter shitshow this virus has been; as a country, we've been in it for what, 6 months with no end in sight?
With news of antibodies lasting a couple of months (maybe), I'm starting to come around to us being stuck with this thing for possibly a lot longer than originally thought. I hope I'm wrong and that nobody really seems to know. But the reality is a lot different now than what it felt like in mid March.
 

54thMA

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With news of antibodies lasting a couple of months (maybe), I'm starting to come around to us being stuck with this thing for possibly a lot longer than originally thought. I hope I'm wrong and that nobody really seems to know. But the reality is a lot different now than what it felt like in mid March.
You and me both.

I thought it would blow over by July.

July 2021 is more like it.

Hopefully.
 
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snowmanny

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More likely you test the whole team and those who are positive get shelved. I think that's the benefit of testing -- you don't have to quarantine people who test clean.
Unless they were just exposed to someone who tested positive. Then I believe you have to quarantine them a couple of days and test them again.
 

nattysez

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Manfred needs to quit screwing with the sport
I don't think he's even gotten started yet. He has no love of the game and has learned that die-hard fans are going to watch regardless of what he does, so he'll add pitch clocks, create a universal DH, limit use of relief pitchers, keep the "signal for IBB," etc., until things are "fast enough" for the modern fan. At this point, I'm not sure there's anything that'll prevent this.
 

Heating up in the bullpen

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Sure, do the cleaning, but remember that the majority of spread is person to person.
"The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person. Based on data from lab studies on COVID-19 and what we know about similar respiratory diseases, it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads." CDC, May 22, 2020.
Wear the f*cking mask. This isn't politics; it's science (and health).
The problem for baseball won't be the activity on the field. It's the activity in the dugout and the locker room and the training room. It's the travel. And it's the rest of life's interactions. And it's the fact that the virus transmits before we know we're sick. We're all swimming upstream against this thing.
 

djbayko

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Sure, do the cleaning, but remember that the majority of spread is person to person.
"The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person. Based on data from lab studies on COVID-19 and what we know about similar respiratory diseases, it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads." CDC, May 22, 2020.
Wear the f*cking mask. This isn't politics; it's science (and health).
The problem for baseball won't be the activity on the field. It's the activity in the dugout and the locker room and the training room. It's the travel. And it's the rest of life's interactions. And it's the fact that the virus transmits before we know we're sick. We're all swimming upstream against this thing.
If they had an NBA-bubble like plan, it might be feasible: (1) get everyone out, (2) disinfect, (3) people are only allowed back in under the new stringent testing and social distancing policies. But even the bubble plan probably has holes in it.
 

Gdiguy

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Sure, do the cleaning, but remember that the majority of spread is person to person.
"The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person. Based on data from lab studies on COVID-19 and what we know about similar respiratory diseases, it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads." CDC, May 22, 2020.
Wear the f*cking mask. This isn't politics; it's science (and health).
The problem for baseball won't be the activity on the field. It's the activity in the dugout and the locker room and the training room. It's the travel. And it's the rest of life's interactions. And it's the fact that the virus transmits before we know we're sick. We're all swimming upstream against this thing.
Yep this is hilariously dumb - close the training facilities where surface transmission is rare, and instead lets have everyone just wandering around Arizona and Florida bored now. Yep, that’ll definitely fix it

Also it’s setting a standard for the actual season that one case is a full shutdown? Why are we even negotiating between 50 and 60, we won’t get more than 20 with that policy in place
 

bosockboy

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Jul 15, 2005
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Sure, do the cleaning, but remember that the majority of spread is person to person.
"The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person. Based on data from lab studies on COVID-19 and what we know about similar respiratory diseases, it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads." CDC, May 22, 2020.
Wear the f*cking mask. This isn't politics; it's science (and health).
The problem for baseball won't be the activity on the field. It's the activity in the dugout and the locker room and the training room. It's the travel. And it's the rest of life's interactions. And it's the fact that the virus transmits before we know we're sick. We're all swimming upstream against this thing.
Not baseball related but this makes me think how difficult it’s going to be for school to happen in 2 months. Same issues.
 

Average Game James

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But even if you test the whole team, you have to shut down operations in the meantime. You can't have football players practicing while their test results are pending. That's a day (or more) with no practices, no runthroughs, no film sessions, no position meetings, no nothing. If it happens during a short week, the team is even more screwed by lack of prep. Same in baseball, if one guy tests positive and the whole team has to be tested, what happens to the game scheduled for that day? Or the team they played the night before? Make-up dates are going to be hard to come by in such a compressed season.

The NBA's bubble plan, despite setting it up in the middle of a current hotspot, probably has the best chance of success, and it still has a ton of weaknesses. And it's just not sustainable over the course of a full season, or even a partial one like MLB is hoping for.
The rapid POC tests run in under 15 minutes, so assuming you have enough machines you can cover the whole team reasonably quickly. Even still, I don’t see how you can credibly have a season since person to person transmission most likely means you see outbreaks among position groups. How is an MLB team supposed to function if half the pitchers get COVID? Or an NFL team that loses half its offensive lineman? Even with expanded rosters, seems like a recipe for disaster.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Think the players wish they had taken one of the owners offers now? $1 bil guaranteed in several of those offers
 

staz

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The cradle of the game.
Well said. This season is fucked. Be safe.
Yup. But start work now to (1) ensure a safe 2021 ST and reg. season, and (2) begin talks assuming reduced/no fans for awhile in 2021, and the 2022 CBA.

Mookie trade and Sale surgery are looking like masterstrokes. And Verdugo's back should be strong like ox!
 

Captaincoop

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Yep this is hilariously dumb - close the training facilities where surface transmission is rare, and instead lets have everyone just wandering around Arizona and Florida bored now. Yep, that’ll definitely fix it

Also it’s setting a standard for the actual season that one case is a full shutdown? Why are we even negotiating between 50 and 60, we won’t get more than 20 with that policy in place
It's hard to see how the plan they developed could call for a shutdown after a case or two. You have to start with the assumption that 3-5 of every 100 people will test positive (and in a group of 20-something athletes they're likely going to be surprised to learn they're sick). You isolate them for 10-14 days and move on.

If every positive test is going to lead to a meltdown, just give up now.
 

cornwalls@6

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Apr 23, 2010
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I don't think he's even gotten started yet. He has no love of the game and has learned that die-hard fans are going to watch regardless of what he does, so he'll add pitch clocks, create a universal DH, limit use of relief pitchers, keep the "signal for IBB," etc., until things are "fast enough" for the modern fan. At this point, I'm not sure there's anything that'll prevent this.
I'm a 56 year old guy who's been a fan since the early 70's. I'm the epitome of a die-hard. I like and advocate for everyone of those changes you listed. 4-1/2 hour nine inning games are not pure, or old school, or anything but tedious and un-entertaining to me. The sport needs to adapt or die. If they don't play this year, I hope they take the opportunity to do a comprehensive re-set and re-think of the on-field product going forward. As well as getting long term labor peace. Given their track record, I'm, shall we say, less than confident that they will.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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If there were to be a 60-game + playoffs agreement, I’d sure prefer MLB characterized 2020 as a “tournament” and not a conventional World Seeries championship. I’d like it because I like baseball — could be really fun, actually, but 2020 would not be a season in the context of the history of the game. Stats should count for career counting but not season highs.

But there’s not gonna be baseball anyway so I should stop worrying about it.
 

54thMA

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Sure, do the cleaning, but remember that the majority of spread is person to person.
"The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person. Based on data from lab studies on COVID-19 and what we know about similar respiratory diseases, it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads." CDC, May 22, 2020.
Wear the f*cking mask. This isn't politics; it's science (and health).
The problem for baseball won't be the activity on the field. It's the activity in the dugout and the locker room and the training room. It's the travel. And it's the rest of life's interactions. And it's the fact that the virus transmits before we know we're sick. We're all swimming upstream against this thing.
This is so on point.

How are you going to stay 6 feet apart in the dugout/bullpen/locker room?
Mound visit; conduct business 6 feet away; does the pitching coach wear a mask during the visit?
The home plate umpire is on top of the catcher; what does he do, step 6 feet back? He can't get balls/strikes right when he's on top of the plate as it is.
Runner on first, no outs; pitcher throws the ball, batter hits it to third, he throws to second, he throws to first, double play, first baseman throws it back to the pitcher, that's 4 players who touched that baseball.

Will there be a bottle of hand sanitizer at every base, asking for a friend.

Hey, good for MLB, they gave it a shot, just mothball the sport until the Spring of 2021, "mabye" we'll be out of the woods by then.

And don't get me started on football and how impossible that will be.

There was an infectious disease expert on the radio here in Boston awhile ago, I forget the station who when asked if sports would return by the Fall said "Sure, the Fall of 2021"............
 

Yelling At Clouds

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Jul 19, 2005
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Sure, do the cleaning, but remember that the majority of spread is person to person.
"The primary and most important mode of transmission for COVID-19 is through close contact from person-to-person. Based on data from lab studies on COVID-19 and what we know about similar respiratory diseases, it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads." CDC, May 22, 2020.
Wear the f*cking mask. This isn't politics; it's science (and health).
The problem for baseball won't be the activity on the field. It's the activity in the dugout and the locker room and the training room. It's the travel. And it's the rest of life's interactions. And it's the fact that the virus transmits before we know we're sick. We're all swimming upstream against this thing.
Also don’t forget that most minor leaguers are probably sharing tiny apartments out of economic necessity.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Jan 23, 2009
20,676
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This is so on point.

How are you going to stay 6 feet apart in the dugout/bullpen/locker room?
Mound visit; conduct business 6 feet away; does the pitching coach wear a mask during the visit?
The home plate umpire is on top of the catcher; what does he do, step 6 feet back? He can't get balls/strikes right when he's on top of the plate as it is.
Runner on first, no outs; pitcher throws the ball, batter hits it to third, he throws to second, he throws to first, double play, first baseman throws it back to the pitcher, that's 4 players who touched that baseball.

Will there be a bottle of hand sanitizer at every base, asking for a friend.

Hey, good for MLB, they gave it a shot, just mothball the sport until the Spring of 2021, "mabye" we'll be out of the woods by then.

And don't get me started on football and how impossible that will be.

There was an infectious disease expert on the radio here in Boston awhile ago, I forget the station who when asked if sports would return by the Fall said "Sure, the Fall of 2021"............
I think I've said this before, but the on field stuff is less of a concern. They can follow the model used in Korea and Taiwan for the on field protocols. To my knowledge, there have not been any cases of outbreak at all. There, players are unmasked on the field but everyone else is masked...umps, coaches, trainers, etc. There's no extra spacing between umps and catchers, or anyone else. The game on the field is fairly normal.

The dangers, particularly here in the US where the spread of the virus isn't nearly as contained as it is in Korea and Taiwan, lie when the players are outside of the facilities. Who they're interacting with at home (and who those folks are dealing with themselves), whether they're going to stores or restaurants or golf courses or casinos or wherever else players might spend their off-time. What is killing US sports is the ineptitude of how the virus has been handled in general. Sports in other countries have been able to restart confidently. Not just KBO and CPBL, but Bundesliga, Premier League (among other Euro soccer leagues), Australia's National Rugby League and Aussie Football League have all been up and running for at least a couple weeks already. Sports can come back, just not in places where the virus isn't even remotely under control...like most of the US.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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The problem isn't the sport. It's where it's being played.


If the 4 major sports just picked up their balls and pucks and went to a country that hadn't stuck it's head up its ass for several months, they could play all the seasons they want.
 

The Gray Eagle

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Aug 1, 2001
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I think I've said this before, but the on field stuff is less of a concern. They can follow the model used in Korea and Taiwan for the on field protocols. To my knowledge, there have not been any cases of outbreak at all. There, players are unmasked on the field but everyone else is masked...umps, coaches, trainers, etc. There's no extra spacing between umps and catchers, or anyone else. The game on the field is fairly normal.

The dangers, particularly here in the US where the spread of the virus isn't nearly as contained as it is in Korea and Taiwan, lie when the players are outside of the facilities. Who they're interacting with at home (and who those folks are dealing with themselves), whether they're going to stores or restaurants or golf courses or casinos or wherever else players might spend their off-time. What is killing US sports is the ineptitude of how the virus has been handled in general. Sports in other countries have been able to restart confidently. Not just KBO and CPBL, but Bundesliga, Premier League (among other Euro soccer leagues), Australia's National Rugby League and Aussie Football League have all been up and running for at least a couple weeks already. Sports can come back, just not in places where the virus isn't even remotely under control...like most of the US.
Exactly. Countries that managed the virus centrally, intelligently, and with science can have sports now. The US probably can't.
 

54thMA

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Exactly. Countries that managed the virus centrally, intelligently, and with science can have sports now. The US probably can't.
Not if they're 0-3 based on your criteria.

This country has fucked this thing up since day one, 6 months in and it's still a complete tire fire.

There is talk of a "second wave"; we're two weeks away from July 4th, today is the official start of summer and we're not even finished with wave one yet.
 

joe dokes

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Exactly. Countries that managed the virus centrally, intelligently, and with science can have sports now. The US probably can't.
I'm not holding my breath waiting for manfred, silver, goodell and bettman to issue a joint statement saying exactly that.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Didn't think about TOR. Nightengale tweeted that the team is currently planning to train in FL and play home games a Tropicana field along Tampa because of travel restrictions. That doesn't sound like a good idea either.

View: https://twitter.com/BNightengale/status/1274387675378708481
Unsurprising that the Jays would not be approved to travel between Canada and the US. The Canadian government is competent. The new plan to have teams convene their training camps in their home cities instead of FL and AZ puts a further crimp in the Jays plans, I would think. Sharing a ballpark for regular games works. Probably doesn't work for camp activities.

Not that Georgia is in any better shape than Florida, but what have they done with old Turner Field since the Braves moved out? Is that still a viable park?
 

axx

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Not that Georgia is in any better shape than Florida, but what have they done with old Turner Field since the Braves moved out? Is that still a viable park?
Believe it's being used by one of the local unis as a football field.