J.T. Realmuto got a load of Miami Marlins in his purview this weekend. So did umpires Tim Timmons, D.J. Reyburn and and Ryan Blakney. So did other Marlins employees, and so did the dugout and clubhouse surfaces at Citizens Bank Park, and so did everyone else the Marlins came in contact with this weekend. Baseball's worst restart nightmare only needed 72 hours to reveal itself.
And the betting here is that baseball will not stop ignoring the main result of its hasty return — that when one team gets it, then two do, then four, and then... well, you get the idea.
At no point has anyone in any sport ever provided the answer to the question, "What happens if you have to stop the games again, and who makes that decision?" because the plan almost certainly was to soldier on no matter who got left behind. Once the smell of the postseason money hit those management nostrils, the most perverse version of "next man up" becomes the operating slogan.
Put another way, the Marlins knew about two positive tests on Friday, and played anyway. There were two more Saturday, and then another eight Monday morning. There was no caution exhibited because there was none in the plan. Once the games began, magic would ensue.
But that assumed the season could get through a weekend before having one of its teams COVID-out. Even by the most dire predictions fueled by baseball's hasty and ill-considered plan, they'd surely get through five percent of their season before something went foul.
But that's been baseball's corporate mindset throughout its shameful summer — the games will make everything better, even though we always suspected and just found out that they can actually make them worse. Of all the restart plans, all of which have their weaknesses as well as strengths, baseball's was the most desperately cobbled. It only seems more pointedly perverse that a team from one of the nation's hottest virus spots traveled to another state that had much stricter protocols and just turned down the Toronto Blue Jays for an extended stay in Pittsburgh over virus concerns.
This has been America in the pandemic — denial, followed by refusal, followed by politics, followed by business. Our concentration has always been based on how to fit the greatest number of events in the smallest amount of time under the standard calendar considerations, as though the virus had the same logistical concerns as the league office. The health part has always been dismissed as an easy obstacle to clear, when any number of experts who didn't have a financial stake said the health component had to come first.
And it hasn't, not in this country. We as a nation have done an atrocious job of confronting the virus because we didn't want to be bothered with the hard work of wearing a mask and socially distancing, and baseball is at the forefront of that ignorance. Its 113-page protocol booklet didn't cover this in any specificity when this was a very likely outcome in a country where all the virus numbers have been going up throughout the spring and summer. The San Francisco Giants will be playing 54 of their 60 games in a recognized hot-spot state, either California, Arizona or Texas; the Oakland A's will be playing 51. The NL and AL West are particularly hard-hit but every team's state has a problem, and that problem is magnified when you move to football. Even hockey, which took its operations to Canada, isn't necessarily clear of the path.
But baseball, which took the virus least seriously by wasting the entire spring arguing with the players union over money, deserves to have the virus hit the business first and hardest. It is the only lesson that will have an impact because it is the only lesson that has had an impact, even in states like Florida where the most basic protections have been routinely ignored with Governor Ron DeSantis' tacid and sometimes overt approval. It seems more people have to get sick in more places for this virus to have our full attention, and baseball is serving as a template for that basic truth.
We will learn, probably in the next 24 hours, what the industry has in mind to deal with the case of the Marlins, and what the other sports have to learn from this. The early betting suggests the answer is nothing, but we live in hope. Even after this, we still live in hope.
