Major League Baseball (MLB) on Monday pushed back its opening day until mid-May at the earliest because of the COVID-19 pandemic after the US government recommended restricting events of more than 50 people for the next eight weeks.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred made the announcement following a conference call with executives of the 30 teams.
“The clubs remain committed to playing as many games as possible when the season begins,” the MLB commissioner’s office said in a statement.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday recommended that gatherings of 50 people or more be canceled or postponed across the nation for the next eight weeks.
“The opening of the 2020 regular season will be pushed back in accordance with that guidance,” Manfred said.
However, there is no telling at this point when games could start.
“We’re not going to announce an alternate opening day at this point. We’re going to have to see how things develop,” Manfred told the St Louis Post-Dispatch at a Cardinals camp in Jupiter, Florida.
He did not want to speculate about the possibility of playing in empty stadiums, saying part of that decision would depend on timing.
The MLB on Thursday last week called off the rest of the spring training schedule and said opening day, which had been scheduled for March 26, would be postponed for at least two weeks.
Teams and players agree that two to four weeks of additional spring training would be needed before the season begins.
“I’m just treating this as January of the winter time,” Arizona Diamondbacks catcher Stephen Vogt said in a text. “I am working out with the anticipation of baseball activities ramping up over the next month. But my mentality is back to preparing for the season.”
Under an agreement last week between the MLB and MLB Players’ Association (MLBPA), players are allowed to decide whether to stay at spring training or go home, but some teams have ignored that deal and told players to leave.
“There should be no organized activities in the camps,” Manfred told the Post-Dispatch. “We did agree with the MLBPA that spring training sites would remain open, but the thought there is with a skeleton crew, really to give players some place to use a gym, as opposed to being forced out into a public gym and the like.”
Any change to the 162-game schedule would necessitate bargaining with the MLBPA over an array of issues, including when and how much players get paid.
The league has not had a mass postponement of openers since 1995, when the season was shortened from 162 games to 144 following a seven-and-a-half-month strike by the players that also wiped out the 1994 World Series.
Opening day was pushed back from April 2 to April 26 and player salaries were reduced by 11.1 percent because of the games lost to the strike.
After a 32-day spring training lockout in 1990 caused opening day to be delayed a week until April 9, the season was extended by three days to allow each team a full 162-game schedule.
Baseball’s first strike lasted from April 1 to 13, 1972, and the season started on April 15.
The 1918 season was cut short because of World War I.
US Provost Marshal General Enoch Crowder announced a regulation on May 23, 1918, that men not involved in useful occupations appear before the draft board.
The US Department of War initially did not rule baseball was non-essential under the “work or fight” order, but US Secretary of War Newton Baker on July 26 announced that baseball had to comply by Sept. 1.
After negotiation, the season ended on Sept. 2 and the Boston Red Sox beat the Chicago Cubs in a World Series played from Sept. 5 to 11.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS