"Everyone has been wrong about everything."
That was governor Andrew Cuomo's tongue-in-cheek way of saying that the world of sports, along with many other aspects of American life and society, remains a huge question mark in the grand scheme of our recovery from and fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He dropped this line, along with many other thoughts, in an interview on "Cuomo Prime Time" on CNN Wednesday night.
Thus, he finds it hard to believe that anyone can project the return of anything -- in our case, a sports league -- never mind the huge amount of variables and limitations and potential alterations that would come into play given the circumstances.
He, like many of us, is also craving a return to normalcy, though, and brought up his discussion with Mets COO Jeff Wilpon about the potential return of baseball.
"I said 'why can't we talk about a baseball season with nobody in the stands?'," Cuomo said. "I think it would be good for the country, I think it would be good for people to have something to watch and do to fight cabin fever and it's something that I'm going to pursue.
"Apparently, Major League Baseball would have to make a deal with the players, because if you have no one in the stands... the economics are going to change. But if Major League Baseball and the players can come to an agreement on how to adjust the economics for that reality, I think that would be a good thing. We have to start to move to normalcy, and people have to start to see some hope in life."
Clearly, the adjustment that Cuomo and Wilpon were referencing would include a cut in pay taken by the players, one that could be significant given the revenue the league would lose based on the absence of fans.
It's that absence of fans and that lost revenue that would prove to be a major roadblock as it has been in other plans. Major League Baseball had proposed an idea, among many others, for games to be played in empty stadiums throughout the greater Phoenix area, where players would be relatively isolated in big hotels and rosters would expand to allow for potential sickness. Because the stands would be empty, the dugout would be abandoned and coaches/players would sit at a safe distance apart in the lower levels of the stands to achieve proper social distancing.
However, this has been the most realistic and achievable method that has been floating around the sports universe. Such an idea even received approval, so long as the structure was actually followed, by Anthony Fauci.
"There's a way of doing that," Fauci said. "Nobody comes to the stadium -- put [the players] in big hotels, you know, wherever you want to play -- keep them very well surveilled, have them tested like every week. And make sure they don't wind up infecting each other or their families, and just let them play the season out."
Fauci was also critical of people who rejected such a notion.
It seems that a handful of political-minded figures are on the same page about a return to sports and what would be involved. But several questions remain, among them whether or not the players will be open to such a financial change, whether or not the owners and the league executives will accept this huge loss of potential income, and whether or not the leagues can actually abide by the rules and limitations set in place by these drastic measures.
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