SI's Emma Baccellieri discusses the scenarios involving baseball games without fans due to the novel coronavirus.
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00:00If Major League Baseball can return without fans, should it?
00:05For more on that question, I'm joined by our Emma Batchelieri.
00:08Now, Emma, to me, this would file under the expression,
00:10perfect is the enemy of good, because if it's safe,
00:14I would want games to be played without fans in the stands.
00:18It's a hard question,
00:19because I think first that if it's safe
00:21is still a really big if,
00:23you know, thinking about the number of people
00:25it takes to play a baseball game.
00:26That's not just the players on the field.
00:28That's not just the managers and the coaching staff.
00:30That's a whole ton of people.
00:32That's trainers and people who are, you know,
00:35the nutritionists and helping with laundry
00:37and cleaning even an empty stadium.
00:39So the if it's safe is still a big if,
00:43but once you've cleared that,
00:46then you're looking at a brand of baseball
00:47that would look really different
00:50to be playing without fans,
00:52to be playing potentially at spring training complexes
00:55in Arizona.
00:56It would still be baseball,
00:58but it would be very, very different baseball.
01:01Yeah, certainly.
01:02Now, obviously though, you know,
01:04that would be something that all sports
01:07are gonna have to deal with, right?
01:08I mean, this seems to be a crisis
01:12that is going to lead to no attendance
01:14for the foreseeable future.
01:16Yeah, I mean, looking at some of the places
01:18around the world that have been able
01:19to return to live sports so far,
01:22you have Taiwan, South Korea is looking like
01:25it might be opening up soon,
01:26and, you know, in both of those places,
01:28you are looking at no fans.
01:30This seems like it's going to be the way that it happens
01:32whenever that's able to happen here in the United States.
01:36But yeah, it'll most certainly be different
01:38if that's what we end up seeing.
01:39Emma, appreciate your time as always.
01:42Yeah, thank you.