June 25th, 2020 at 8:00 am 
by Ron Cervenka There isn’t a baseball fan on the planet who wasn’t ecstatic when MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced on Tuesday that the 2020 season would resume on July 24, albeit under an abbreviated 60-game schedule.
But aside from the money and length-of-season issues that caused negotiations between MLB and the MLB Players Association to stall repeatedly, the single biggest concern for the two multibillion-dollar factions are health and safety concerns due to the current coronavirus pandemic.
There is no disputing that the health and safety protocols outlined in the (eventual) MLB-MLBPA agreement are very detailed and well thought out. But the simple and painful truth is that they will, in all probability, fail at some point.
Although this is not what anyone wants to hear, and despite claims by politicians (on both sides of the aisle) that the so-call ‘curve‘ is flattening out, the brutally painful truth is that it is not; in fact, quite the contrary is true.
Late Wednesday night, NBC News reported (via Twitter) that the US had set a new single-day record for newly confirmed COVID-19 cases at over 36,000, topping the previous single-day record of 34,203 set on April 25.
There are some, perhaps many, who are not buying into this whole coronavirus thing and honestly believe that the overwhelming numbers are false or manipulated. To them, all I can say is try convincing anyone who has lost a family member to the disease or who has tested positive for it that it isn’t real.
By now, most baseball fans are well aware that there have been several players and staff members that have tested positive for COVID-19, including Colorado Rockies All-Star outfielder Charlie Blackmon and several members of the Philadelphia Phillies organization, which resulted in the closing of their Spring Training facility in Clearwater, FL.
The good news is that, to date, no player, coach, or staff member – or members of their immediate families – have died from the disease.
The bad news is that, sadly, it is only a matter of time until one does.
Money, statistics, or love of the game aside, have MLB and the players union made a potentially fatal mistake by bringing back baseball in the middle of the worst pandemic the world has seen in over a century?
It appears that we may soon find out; unless, of course, medical experts intervene and shut it down.
Stay tuned…
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Posted in 
Man shut the hell up
“If I close my eyes, maybe they won’t see me.”
I take a slightly different angle on Covid and the playing of MLB. I, like many others, is concerned and careful with respect to the Covid virus.I’m careful to wear a face covering and am mindful of my physical distancing at all times. I have become a “hand washing” fiend, but I’m also of the mind that life must go on with the simple and sometimes inconvenient things we must do in order to stay safe and healthy.
At the same time we must all acknowledge that Coivd is here, it’s amongst us and we can either be paralyzed by the numbers and work ourselves into a frenzy or we can move on with life by mitigating our exposure and hope for the best. That’s the camp I’m in!
A vaccine won’t be readily available until late 2020 or early 2021 and with a world in need of a vaccine, wide-scale vaccinations probably won’t be available until late 2021.
I’m glad MLB and the MLBPA have agreed to play. With riots, looting, blame shifting and scapegoating going on at a fever pitch in America, I think it’s a positive thing that we might be able to be entertained with America’s past time…..baseball.