SI's Chris Halicke looks into how vital health and safety protocols will be to help contain the spread of COVID-19 throughout the 2020 MLB season.
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00:00If there's one common adversary that we all forgot about while Major League Baseball and the Players Association were arguing with each other, and that's obviously COVID-19, what suspended the MLB season in the first place?
00:14The number of positive tests that are coming back from multiple teams, it's caused all 30 teams to have their spring training facilities shut down.
00:23It's a harsh reminder and a cruel reality that COVID-19 did not go away.
00:30Living here in Texas, we're watching as the states reopen that people are not wearing masks as often as they were before, they're not honoring social distancing as they were before, and that's obviously causing an uptick in spikes in states like Texas, Arizona, and Florida.
00:48And this is something that Major League Baseball is going to have to be really ahead of the curve on here, is if they're going to play a season, which hopefully the league and the players can agree on what MLB has implemented, if they do end up playing a season, they have to prepare for positive tests.
01:06It's going to happen. The question is, how do they limit the amount of positive tests? Because if it starts getting out of control, Major League Baseball will have to probably shut things down again, which is the last thing that they want to do, not just because it would damage the sport, but obviously it hurts revenue streams as well.
01:23So the bottom line is COVID-19 is still making a huge impact on the baseball season. Hopefully we're looking at light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to getting a season in place, however COVID-19 could strike back and end up suspending everything and delaying any kind of efforts that we possibly had in the first place of trying to get a season.
01:48So hopefully MLB can be ahead of the curve, take care of it, nip it in the bud, and try to limit the amount of exposure that these players have, possibly have with the virus, and they can end up playing a full baseball season.