Tag Archives: MLB

Recently, several Major League Baseball teams announced that they would extend how long they sold alcohol in response to changes that have shortened the average time it takes to finish a game.

The Arizona Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers are among the teams who have announced that they will sell alcohol beyond the seventh inning.

Traditionally, teams declared last call on all alcohol sales after the seventh inning. The rationale for stopping beer sales in the seventh inning was to allow fans two innings to “sober up” before they headed to their cars after the game.

With the unforeseen circumstance of lost revenue due to shorter baseball games, some MLB teams are expanding the window in which alcohol can be served inside their ballparks.
Photo R. Anderson

However, the newly introduced pitch clock has dropped the average time of games by about 30 minutes to start the season leading to scenarios where the seventh inning is arriving earlier than it used to in many cases.

As a result, there is less time for teams to sell alcohol.

I never held any grand illusion that stopping beer sales in the seventh inning meant that there would be a decrease in the number of drunk fans leaving a Ballpark.

A 2011 study by the University of Minnesota determined that one in every 12 fans leaving a sporting event are above the legal limit when it comes to alcohol. That means in a stadium holding 40,000 people, 3,200 fans will likely be legally impaired by the time they leave.

To be fair, I know that most attendees of sporting events drink responsibly and use designated drivers. In fact, the above statistic breaks down to about eight percent of the total attendees. So, I am not painting all fans who drink with the same broad Clydesdale hair brush.

However, it only takes one of those individuals to make a bad decision and cost someone their life.

I often left Ballparks at the seventh inning stretch to ensure that I got ahead of the crowds leaving after the ninth inning.

Whether leaving early actually increased my odds of avoiding an encounter with a drunk driver or not, the practice usually made me feel like it did.

The entire premise of MLB teams ending beer sales in the seventh inning to give fans time to sober up falls flatter than a dropped keg when faced with the new approach of extending beer sales into later innings to allow teams to maintain their revenue streams.

Make no mistake, sporting events generate thousands of dollars of revenue from alcohol sales every game.

An example of how much revenue can be found in the trend of beer snakes. For those who may be unaware of what a beer snake is, it is comprised of empty beer cups extending from the bottom of a stadium section to the top. One of the teams that fully embraces the beer snake is the D.C. Defenders of the XFL.

For the sake of some quick journalist math, let us assume that with about two cups per inch, a hundred-foot beer snake would be comprised of around 2,400 cups.

Now, let us say that each of those 2,400 beer cups in the beer snake cost $12 when they were full.

That makes the cost of the beer snake to be $28,800 from head to tail.

Once we realize that not every beer sold in a stadium or ballpark becomes part of the snake, we are talking about some serious money.

The Sporting News estimated that MLB teams could make up to an average of $8 million on beer sales a season for their 81 home games. Multiply that by 30 teams and the amount of money teams are heading to the mountain with expands to a whopping $240 million for the league per year.
Graphic R. Anderson

The Sporting News took the alcohol sales math further and estimated that MLB teams could make up to an average of $8 million on beer sales a season for their 81 home games. Multiply that by 30 teams and the amount of money teams are heading to the mountain with expands to a whopping $240 million for the league per year.

Considering a 31 minute shorter game time thanks to the tinkering MLB did for the 2023 season, and the 30 teams could lose a little under $35 million in beer sales in total over the course of a season.

Proponents of extending the alcohol sales window will likely try to paint a human element on the issue by saying that longer sales mean that the vendors who provide alcohol to thirsty fans will not miss out on as many tips.

To that I say, many of the vendors at the games I have attended usually park blocks away from the Ballpark. By extending alcohol sales, vendors will now be faced with the prospect of having to walk further past more buzzed and/or drunk drivers leaving.

To be clear, I am not against responsible alcohol consumption inside Ballparks, or anywhere else for that matter.

What I am against, is when decisions that have real impacts on innocent people are made solely on a financial profit basis as appears to be the case with the MLB teams extending their alcohol sales.

The optics of extending beer sales beyond the seventh inning is profit over safety no matter how many team spokespeople try to spin it as a catering to fans approach.

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Matt Strahm weighed in on the issue of longer beer sales during an appearance on the Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast and provided some sobering insight.

“The reason we stopped it in the seventh before was to give our fans time to sober up and drive home safe, correct?” Strahm said. “So now with a faster pace game, and me just being a man of common sense, if the game is going to finish quicker, would we not move the beer sales back to the sixth inning to give our fans time to sober up and drive home?”

It used to be that common sense would say that the best approach was to be proactive and try to avoid a situation from happening versus reacting to it after the fact.

A bartender who over-serves a patron is held responsible if that patron gets in a car and kills someone. It will only take one incident of a fan leaving a Ballpark and killing someone for the beer sales issue to be placed back on tap.

Someone who is going to overindulge at the Ballpark is going to do that whether alcohol sales end in the seventh inning or the ninth inning. So, at the end if the day, the percentage of drunk and unruly fans will likely not increase if teams continue to leave the bar open longer.

What will change is any goodwill MLB teams got by saying that they were halting beer sales early to allow fans time to sober up before hitting the road.

Those MLB teams don’t get to have it both ways. The optics are either, fan safety or profits.

With the rise in sports leagues cozying up to Sportsbooks, it is fair to say that MLB teams are gambling that extending beer sales closer to the time that fans leave will not lead to catastrophic events like drunk driving crashes, or fans falling over a railing in the Ballpark.

I certainly hope they are right and that the cash grab of later alcohol sales does not increase the occurrence of fan death and injury.

Then again, every gambler runs out of luck eventually.

Now if you’ll excuse me, doing all of this math has made me feel like I need to rest for a bit.

Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, Cactus League, Grapefruit League, Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball, Spring Training, Sugar Land Skeeters

Looking Back at 50 Years of Designated Hitting in Baseball as MLB Moves Fans’ Cheese Once Again

March 22, 2023 Ryan Anderson

As Spring Training winds down, and teams begin their final preparations for the 2023 Major League Baseball Season, a lot of attention has been paid to the new rules that are being rolled out in an attempt to speed up the game.

The changes coming to an MLB Ballpark near you include, banning infield shifts, putting pitchers on a pitch clock and making the bases larger.

When announcing the rules changes MLB officials noted they were aimed at improving pace of play, action and safety at the MLB level.

The rules changes have received a mostly mixed response ranging from fans who believe that baseball traditions should be maintained at all costs, to those fans who see no issues with changing rules on a regular basis.

Personally, I fall somewhere along the middle of the spectrum.

While I would not consider myself to be a full baseball traditionalist, one of the things I enjoyed most about baseball was that it was the only major sport that did not include a clock of any kind.

Unlike football, basketball, soccer and hockey, baseball game lengths were varied like snowflakes and varied depending on the actions of the players on the field.

Sadly, those days are now gone thanks in part to fans with shorter attention spans and a desire to compress the action into a predefined, yet completely arbitrary definition of how long a baseball game should take.

The latest slate of rules changes follows changes made to extra innings of games starting with a runner on second base, to a universal designated hitter rolling out for the 2022 MLB season.

Prior to the latest bunch of rules changes, perhaps the greatest “who moved my cheese” moment in baseball was the introduction of the designated hitter in 1973.

I was born into a world where the DH already existed in the American League. As such, I did not experience the tectonic plate shifting impacts felt by those who lived in a world before the DH.

For many of those baseball fans from the before times, the introduction of the DH sent ripples through their collective scorecard completing souls.

The American League introduced the designated hitter, or DH, fifty years ago, and the game of baseball was forever changed. Once the designated hitter was introduced, pitchers on the American League ball clubs were no longer burdened with the hassle of having to bat. National League pitchers would continue to take their swings at the plate.

On January 11, 1973, American League owners voted 8–4 to approve the designated hitter for a three-year trial run. On April 6, 1973, Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees became the first designated hitter in MLB history when he stepped into the batter’s box to face Luis Tiant of the Boston Red Sox.

Blomberg was walked on five pitches with the bases loaded in the first inning, which meant that not only was Blomberg the first DH, he was also the first DH to earn an RBI.

On April 6, 1973, Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees, depicted here on one of my 1988 Topps Baseball cards, became the first designated hitter in MLB history when he stepped into the batter’s box to face Luis Tiant of the Boston Red Sox. Blomberg was walked on five pitches with the bases loaded in the first inning which meant that not only was Blomberg the first DH, he was also the first DH to earn an RBI.

The “three-year” DH experiment has rolled on for 50-years and counting.

Mention the designated hitter in polite dinner conversation, and one will quickly find out how divisive the topic really is among fans.

The pro designated hitter camp will point to the fact that by eliminating the pitcher as a batter the rallies can continue without the fear of a nearly guaranteed out with a pitcher batting.

The foes of the DH rule will say that having pitchers batting, despite the almost guaranteed out they provide, is a truer form of the game, is more historically accurate, and creates more cat and mouse strategy between the managers.

The debate entered a new phase when the universal DH was applied to all 30 MLB teams as a health and safety measure during the 2020 season as a result of COVID-19.

The DH returned to pre-pandemic rules during the 2021 season before being universally applied to all 30 MLB ballclubs starting with the 2022 season.

I was so convinced that the baseball purists would never allow designated hitters full time in the National League that I boldly proclaimed in a 2013 column honoring the 40^th anniversary of the DH that, “I do not see a time in the near future where the DH will go away any more than I predict a time when the National League will start using them in their home ballparks.”

I could certainly argue whether the DH expanding nine years after I made that statement counts as the near future, or if I put a five-year cap on a definition of near future. Instead, I will admit that I was wrong about the universal DH coming to baseball.

Personally, as someone who always identified more as an American League fan, I will not miss watching National League pitchers try to bunt, or strike out on three pitches.

I know that some National League pitchers could swing a mean bat. As such, it is unfair to say that all they do is bunt, strike out, or pop out. I also know Shohei Ohtani can take the field as a pitcher, designated hitter and outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels. So, there are definitely exceptions to the rule regarding whether pitchers can hit.

MLB was not done tweaking the game by adding a Universal DH. It is like someone at MLB headquarters looked out at the field and said, “hold my glove” as they looked at other ways they could upset the popcorn cart of baseball purists.

Which brings us to the 2023 MLB season that begins in eight days.

MLB has already had to make changes to the rules related to the pitch clock since wily managers and players found ways to best the system for an advantage in their favor during Spring Training games.

When announcing the tweaks, it was stated that more changes could be coming to ensure that the clock is applied fairly across all 30 MLB Ballparks.

When rumblings about a pitch clock coming to baseball first started a few years ago, I questioned whether that was in the best interest of the game. I still question that today.

The Sugar Land Skeeters and their fellow Atlantic League of Professional Baseball clubs were used to test many proposed MLB changes, including a pitch clock, prior to the changes moving up to MLB Ballparks.
Photo R. Anderson

The Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, of which the Sugar Land Skeeters used to belong, served as a testing ground for many of the rules that MLB is rolling out now, including the pitch clock.

Watching Skeeters games with the pitch clock and robotic umpires back in 2019, I felt my inner baseball purist scream.

I also pictured a scenario where the players from the movie “Field of Dreams” would quickly go back into the corn field if they emerged from the stalks and discovered Ray Kinsella operating a pitch clock.

Say it ain’t so, Shoeless Joe. Baseball has a pitch clock.

To be fair, the game of baseball will continue, albeit with a little less joy from some of the residents of Mudville.

However, if the MLB brain trust continues to tweak the game in order to appease a crowd that often seems more interested in the amenities in a Ballpark then the actual plays on the diamond, it might not be too long before baseball does not look anything like the game I grew up watching.

That is not to say that I want to see baseball revert back to the way it was played in the late 19^th or early 20^th Century. I just think that part of the charm of baseball exists in its imperfections, and the fact that there was no time clock or buzzer to beat.

Continued efforts to shoehorn baseball into a mold that it doesn’t belong in could backfire. It is entirely possible that efforts to change the rules of the game to attract new fans fail, while also causing the traditional fans to find other ways to spend their time that don’t involve baseball.

Unfortunately, as long as advertisers and broadcasters continue to pump millions of dollars into the team coffers, MLB may not care so much about what the product on the field looks like as long as people still pay money to see players run around the pizza box size bases.

Perhaps like no other time in my lifetime, we are all about to discover whether if you time it, they will come.

Now if you’ll excuse me, all of this talk about pizza box size bases as me hungry for a slice.

Houston Astros, Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball, Sugar Land Skeeters

Space Cowboys and Commanders Leave Much to be Desired

February 2, 2022 Ryan Anderson

Recently, two teams I have a lengthy history of supporting decided to change their names.

That fact alone is not that surprising. In recent years, teams changing their names has been a rather common occurrence with the reasoning behind the name changes running the gambit from bowing to pressure from outside forces, to wanting to freshen a brand to sell more merch.

In keeping with that tried-and-true model, in the latest example of the name game, one team changed their name due to outside pressure from groups who considered their old name to be offensive, and the other team changed their name for what can likely be called a money grab to force their fans to buy new merchandise and to put their special seal on a new asset.

In both cases, the new names left me feeling less than excited to continue rooting for either team.

The first example of rebranding gone bad is the Sugar Land Skeeters becoming the Sugar Land Space Cowboys.

If the team really wanted to pay homage to the Sugar Land past, they could have gone with calling the team the Imperials in honor of the rich history of Sugar Land as a producer of Imperial sugar. Instead they decided to play the role of the Joker.
Photo R. Anderson

Because when I think of a great name for a Minor League Baseball team I think, “hey let’s find a title from the Steve Miller Band’s catalog and go with that.” I suppose it could have been worse and they could have called them Maurice.

But all tributes to the Joker aside, Skeeters was a name that reflected the fact that this side of Texas is ground zero for the blood sucking insects.

The rebranding trying to tie the Space Cowboys to actual aerospace workers and the “old west” history of a Houston suburb just falls flat on so many levels.

If the team really wanted to pay homage to the Sugar Land past, they could have gone with calling the team the Imperials in honor of the rich history of Sugar Land as a producer of Imperial sugar.

Better still, they could have left well enough alone and built on the legacy of the Sugar Land Skeeters instead of feeling the need to create a new brand.

In many of my marketing and management classes the value of building on an existing brand was front and center in lessons on what good marketeers do.

Instead, of following those tried and true principles the team decided to rebrand mirror the Astros lest we forget that they are an affiliate of the Major League cheaters.

In addition to a really lame new name, one of my favorite mascots, Swatson, is being sent on an imaginary trip around the world with another former Skeeters mascot named Moe and being replaced by a blue space dog. Call me crazy, but wouldn’t the sidekick of a space cowboy be a space horse and not a space dog?

I mean I get that dogs are man’s best friend and all that, but a horse, or a cow, really would have sold the whole space cowboy theme a bit more unless the space dog is meant to corral all of the sheep into buying into the new name.

As part of the rebrand launch back stories were written for the new mascot as well as detailed descriptions of how the team colors and logo were designed. When a marketer has to spend several paragraphs justifying their actions one really has to question their own buy-in on the project.

Talk about the pompatus of self-righteousness.

Shortly after the news broke that the Houston Astros bought the Skeeters, I wrote a column noting that they would likely take something I considered special and turn it into something fit for a metal trash can, and in a little over a year they did just that.

Sorry Space Cowboys but this is one fan who will not be joining you on your new quest to get money from the citizens of Space City. I would rather cling to my good memories of Swatson and the Skeeters while taking my money and running away from your rebrand.

The second example of rebranding gone bad is the Washington Football Team becoming the Washington Commanders.

As noted before in several other columns, I was born outside of Washington D.C. and was a fan of the burgundy and gold from a very young age. I even have the Hogs nose to prove it.

While I will certainly concede that the team needed to move past their use of Native American branding, the Commanders just makes me think of a bad G.I. Joe cover band.

It also creates the issue that one usually would have a single Commander in Chief versus multiple Commanders. Or as the old saying goes, too many chefs ruin the soup.

I am not alone in thinking that the Commanders name fails to capture the imagination. Former players and fans alike have not been afraid to unleash the full fury of their displeasure about the new name on various social media platforms.

One of the early leaked new names for the Washington Football Team was the Red Wolves. Unfortunately for proponents of that name, the trademark was already owned by Arkansas State University.
Photo R. Anderson

I get that the team needed to find a name that they could trademark and make money off of. One of the early favorites for a new name was the Washington Red Wolves which would have allowed fans to keep singing a certain song by replacing the word “skins” with the word “wolves.”

Sadly, for that football team in Washington, Arkansas State University already held the trademark for Red Wolves. So, any thoughts of singing Hail to the Red Wolves in D.C. were quickly dashed.

I get that the Red Wolves fell out of the pack of potential names, but are we to believe that after nearly three years of trying to find a name that was not offensive and could be trademarked, the only options was Commanders?

The anticlimactic reveal of Commanders follows the news last year of the Cleveland Indians becoming the Cleveland Guardians which is another name that falls short.

As I noted last year in a column about the Guardians, there was already a team in Cleveland named the Guardians. So, not only did the Cleveland Indians brain trust come up with a less than stunning name based on some monuments on a bridge, they did not even do enough research to realize that the name was already in use in their own town.

One certainly hopes that after three years of searching the Washington Football Team at least verified that there wasn’t already a Washington Commanders franchise in town.

I realize that there are likely people who think that the Space Cowboys and Commanders are good team names. Some of those people may even not be employed by the two franchises that chose those names.

But for me and my time and money, I am not planning to give any thought to the Space Cowboys or the Commanders, since they are doing me wrong, doing me wrong.

Thanks for the memories, Swatson. I will always remember the times we shared at the Ballpark before the Astros came and ruined everything. Stay Gold Swatson. You will be missed.
Photo R. Anderson

I am not ruling out a return to the Ballpark in Sugar Land since my desire to see live baseball will likely overcome my disdain for the Space Cowboys name and a desire to not give any money to anything owned by the Astros.

But, if I do return to Constellation Field, I will either be wearing my Skeeters gear, or showing support for the Round Rock Express or Albuquerque Isotopes.

As far as the Commanders go, I will remember the glory days of my youth in a Maryland suburb where I led the Super Bowl cheers in elementary school. Those are enough Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey all the time memories without tarnishing them by going commando for the Commanders.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a strange urge to listen to the Steve Miller Band.

Baseball Movies, Durham Bulls, Major League Baseball

Way Back Wednesday: Remembering that time COVID-19 Lead MLB to Cancel the Field of Dreams Game as Cases Among Players Continue to Rise

August 11, 2021 Ryan Anderson

Editor’s Note: As part of our occasional Way Back Wednesday feature, today we travel back one year and one week ago to August 3, 2020 when Major League Baseball (MLB) cancelled the highly touted Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa, near the set of the 1989 movie of the same name as the game.

Fast forward to 2021, and the St. Louis Cardinals have been replaced by the New York Yankees as the team facing the Chicago White Sox among the corn stalks. But to be fair, MLB had always wanted the Yankees to be involved in the game but had only added the Cardinals back when they switched to a regional schedule for the 2020 baseball season.

Of course, the change in White Sox opponent is really the only thing that has changed between last year when the game was cancelled, and this year when it will be held. COVID-19 cases are still raging like a California wildfire across the country, but apparently people have grown tired of listening to science and decided just to play ball while banning mandates on masks to protect children and others in society.

As noted many times, Field of Dreams is one of my favorite movies. I often quote it as well as Bull Durham, but struggled to find words from either movie to try to make sense of the senseless acts being committed in the name of trying to stay on brand while Rome burns. What I finally came up with is that many people seem determined to “go the distance” to appease a twice impeached one term president even if it means killing people in the process by tying the hands of people actually trying to be helpful and save lives.

We will delve more into the Field of Dreams game in future writings, until then, please enjoy this column from August 3, 2020 to see how little has changed between now and then aside from the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who were alive when this column was first written are now dead thanks to COVID-19 and the actions, or in-actions of certain public officials.

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It turns out that if you build it in the middle of a global COVID-19 pandemic, they won’t come.

Such is the case for the highly touted Major League Baseball (MLB) game between the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals that was scheduled to be played August 13 in Dyersville, Iowa amongst the cornfields made famous by the movie Field of Dreams.

On Monday word spread that the game was canceled amid concerns of the spread of COVID-19.

Announced last year, the game was to feature the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees “having a catch” on a specially constructed, 8,000-seat Ballpark near the movie’s iconic diamond. The Cardinals replaced the Yankees on the program after MLB opted for a regionally based schedule.

The cancellation comes as the St. Louis Cardinals became the latest team to get put in time out after multiple players and staff tested positive for COVID-19.

For comparison, the National Hockey League (NHL) reported Monday that zero players, or other personal inside their two bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton have tested positive for COVID-19.

First announced last year, the “Field of Dreams” game was originally set to feature the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees “having a catch” at a specially constructed, 8,000-seat Ballpark near the movie’s iconic diamond. The Cardinals replaced the Yankees on the program after MLB opted for a regionally based schedule. On Monday word spread that the game was canceled amid concerns of the spread of COVID-19 within the ranks of MLB.
Photo R. Anderson

Bubbles work, but MLB owners burst the bubble approach by demanding that they be free to move about the country, or at least move about regionally, to play ball in their Ballparks.

It is no secret why MLB wanted to be bubble free. Houston Astros owner Jim Crane was brutally honest when he said he wanted as many fans as possible in the Ballpark buying t-shirts and concessions in order to recoup some lost revenue. As I noted at the time, that was one of the most tone-deaf statements I ever heard an MLB owner make.

COVID-19 cases continue to rise from coast to coast, and within MLB dugouts. As a result, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred warned over the weekend that the season could be shut down if players do not do better containing the spread of COVID-19.

During an interview with ESPN Manfred stated, “the players need to be better. But I am not a quitter in general and there is no reason to quit now. We have had to be fluid, but it is manageable.”

Manfred made those remarks, as 20% of the league was sidelined in an attempt to combat two separate coronavirus outbreaks.

The “I am not a quitter,” and it isn’t my fault, remarks reminded me of a couple of other people who were faced with making tough decisions as the reality of a situation bigger than themselves crashed in upon them.

On August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned from office by uttering in part, “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.”

Putting the interests of America ahead of his desire to finish his term, Nixon became the only U.S. president to resign from office.

Rob Manfred could learn a lot from Richard Nixon in how to, as the late Kenny Rogers would say, “know when to fold them.” No, I am not saying that Manfred should resign, although I have seen rumblings from others thinking that he should.

It is time for MLB to resign themselves to the fact that the 2020 season is a lost cause. MLB tried to have a season. No one can take that away from them. Walking away now, and canceling the season before it gets worse is the honorable thing to do.

Instead of making a graceful exit, and doing a proverbial flyover in Marine One, Manfred seems determined to follow the example of another Republican president by using the blame and deflect game as he puts lives and careers at risk to seemingly serve his own self interests of proving that he isn’t a quitter and we would have had a season if not for those meddling kids being kids in the middles of a pandemic.

Yes, some players are leaving their hotel rooms when they travel and are potentially getting exposed to the virus. But they are just as easily exposed during the constant travel from ballpark to ballpark.

For Manfred’s apparent role model for taking zero responsibility, consider the actions of the 45^th President of the United States who has blamed nearly everyone under the sun for making him look bad with the spread of COVID-19.

For MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s apparent role model for taking zero responsibility, consider the actions of the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, shown in Lego form, who has blamed nearly everyone under the sun for making him look bad with the spread of COVID-19, while seeming to take zero responsibility for trying to contain a virus that has killed over 156,000 Americans. Manfred, is blaming players instead of taking ownership of a failed plan to avoid a bubble approach to returning to action and it may cost him the season he fought so hard to have.
Photo R. Anderson

Yes, Mr. President over 156,000 Americans willingly died of COVID-19 just to make you look bad. That is some next level narcissism for someone to believe that.

Instead, over 156,000 Americans died in part due to a lack of centralized leadership and messaging coming out of the White House. Oh yeah, and the rush to reopen everything when we hadn’t flattened the curve didn’t help either.

In lieu of a national plan, we get attacks on doctors and the media who are both engaged in trying to get the truth out and help save lives as they try to fill the leadership void. We also get attacks on governors for not managing the one of 50 different ways the United States is attacking COVID-19.

Like the effort to combat COVID-19, MLB is also suffering from a lack of leadership and messaging. If MLB was playing games in a bubble, I would give them way more leeway to try to get the situation under control. But they aren’t, and it isn’t.

Perhaps showing that players are not really buying into a belief that MLB has their best interests at heart, more and more players are opting out of the 2020 MLB season.

I cannot blame the players for deciding that the risks to their health are not worth playing ball in the current COID-19 climate.

It is time for MLB to ease the players pain and try again next year. The National Football League and College Football also need to take notice and realize that sports outside of a bubble don’t work.

MLB let greed guide them over science. If the NFL and NCAA play football in the fall it will be an equally greedy endeavor.

I have said it before, and it bears saying again, how on earth did we let ourselves get here? We really have no one to blame but ourselves. Thankfully we can also all be part of the solution.

It is time to corral COIVD-19 and not try to return sports and other areas of live to normal while over 1,000 people a day are dying. These aren’t normal times, but they could be if everyone would just commit to wearing a mask and keeping their distance.

The change in White Sox opponent back to the New York Yankees is really the only thing that has changed between 2020 when the game was cancelled, and 2021 when it will be held. COVID-19 cases are still raging like a California wildfire across the country, but apparently people have grown tired of listening to science and decided just to play ball while banning mandates on masks to protect children and others in society.
Photo R. Anderson

Such simple things to do, yet thanks to political lines being drawn, and a leadership vacuum, we are all left to fend for ourselves and hope for the best.

There is an empty Ballpark nestled among Iowa cornfields ready for baseball to return there in 2021, it is time for the 30 MLB Ballparks to do the same.

Of course, if we fail to get a handle on COVID-19, there may not be any baseball next year either. Much like He-Man of the Masters of the Universe franchise, we have the power. We don’t even need to hold a magic sword aloft as we recite a mantra. We just need to wear a mask, socially distance, avoid crowds, wash our hands and act as one nation.

It isn’t rocket science, but it is scientifically proven to work. If we fail, we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some bubble hockey to watch.

Major League Baseball, Washington Nationals

As COVID-19 Cases Rise Once More, the Return of Masks Shows it’s Déjà vu all Over Again

July 30, 2021 Ryan Anderson

In the words of the late, great, Hall of Famer, Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again” as once more COVID-19 cases are on the rise and baseball games and other aspects of life are being rescheduled or cancelled.

The July 28, 2021 game between the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies was postponed less than two hours before first pitch “to allow for continued testing and contact tracing involving members of the Nationals organization,” according to a statement by Major League Baseball.

The latest outbreak marks the third time this season that the Nationals have had to place multiple players on the COVID list.

The Nats began the season with nine players and four coaches impacted by an outbreak on the team plane.

Then in May, starting pitcher Erick Fedde tested positive and reliever Tanner Rainey was forced to quarantine for being a close contact.

In response to rising cases of the Delta COVID-19 variant, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued revised guidance for a return to wearing masks indoors for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals after an internal document showed that the variant is far more infectious than previously thought.

Additionally, on July 29, 2021 President Joe Biden mandated that all federal employees and contractors either be vaccinated or submit to regular testing as a condition of their employment.

Yes, Yogi, indeed it is déjà vu all over again as cases rise and some people still refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated.

To quote another Yogism, “you can observe a lot by watching.”

Watching the number of cases climbing, one can observe that instead of saying mission accomplished and getting on with our lives as they were in the before times, we are heading backwards in the battle to rid our shores of COVID-19.

In many ways the return of a world where mask mandates and potential shutdowns are being talked about boils down to the fact that more people did not get vaccinated back in May when vaccines were plentiful and the Delta variant was barely gaining strength.

In hindsight, lifting mask guidance in May and trusting that the unvaccinated would continue to wear masks was a lesson in foolishness since many in the anti-mask and anti-vaccine crowd will never wear a mask even if their lives and the lives of their children depended on it. Which it does, but more on that in a bit.

But instead of looking back at the mistakes of May, one must look at the present and decide how to move forward with the current conditions.

I get that people can have concerns about getting vaccinated and understand that some people require more data before they are willing to let someone stick a needle in their arm.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could likely put a lot of minds at ease by lifting the Emergency Use Authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines and stating that they are safe and effective for every day use and fully vetted and approved.

Educational outreach is critical to reaching the unvaccinated and showing them that the risks of dying from COVID-19 far outweigh any potential side effects from a vaccine.

But while people are parsing through the data to achieve a comfort level to get the vaccine, they should be wearing a mask at the very least to protect those around them from getting sick.

The politics of being anti-mask and anti-vaccine is another thing I don’t understand. While many politicians are touting the need to get educated on masks and vaccines, too many others are having their “let them eat cake moments.”

Instead of being at the forefront of encouraging their constituents to mask up and vax up, several politicians seem willing to let people die from a largely preventable disease just so they can score political points among a small minority of the country as part of a pandemic of stupidity.

I am all for adults having the freedom to educate themselves on the vaccines, but I am not for putting children at risk in the process. Currently all children under 12-years-old are not eligible to get vaccinated.

Those too young to get vaccinated must rely on those who are old enough to provide a bubble of protection around them to keep them healthy until a vaccine is approved for their age group.

That is the thing I do not understand, many people are so anti-mask and anti-vaccine that they are willing to risk their own children getting sick, or dying, just to make a point and to stay “on brand.”

Children’s hospitals are filling up with patients who are too young to get vaccinated and became infected through contact with someone who most likely was old enough to get vaccinated but didn’t.

In 1985, musician Sting told his band mates of the Police to not stand so close to him as he ventured off on a solo career.

His first solo album, Dream of the Blue Turtles featured a song called Russians. While the song, Russians, was written in response to Cold War tensions between the then U.S.S.R and the United States, one can see parallels in the lyrics to the current standoff related to the vaccinated and unvaccinated in the battle against COVID-19.

Russians opens with the lines, “In Europe and America there’s a growing feeling of hysteria. Conditioned to respond to all the threats. In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets.”

Fast forward to 2021 and one could say that the rhetorical speeches of some governors who are anti-mask mandates in school are fueling the rising tensions.

Turn on the local news in many southern states and one is likely to see angry parents berating local school districts who are trying to keep their kids safe by telling them to mask up.

Unfortunately, those anti-mask, anti-vaccine parents have governors willing to back them in their anti-science rants.

In keeping with our Russians theme other lyrics state, “I don’t subscribe to this point of view. It’d be such an ignorant thing to do. If the Russians (or in our case unvaccinated) love their children too.”

Masks and vaccines have become so politicized that people are talking past each other instead of to each other.

Going back to the Russians well once more, “There is no monopoly on common sense. On either side of the political fence. We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.”

As noted many times over the past year and a half, COVID-19 does not care if you are a democrat or a republican. It does not care if you think it is “Fake News” or just a flu.

People are still getting sick, and even if they don’t die, many will have long term health effects.

Having to cancel, and/or postpone baseball games, or other sporting events due to COVID-19 is one thing.

Being willing to risk that a child may never get to play sports at all due to long haul COVID because their lungs got trashed when they were at a summer camp full of unvaccinated counselors is another thing.

But what might save us, me and you is if the unvaccinated love their children too.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to dust off some Sting CDs and party like it is 1985.

Southpaw Musings