The Washington Nationals begin the 2020 MLB regular season on Thursday, July 23, at home against the New York Yankees, but then there’s also the first of three exhibition games on Saturday, July 18, at home against the Philadelphia Phillies to look forward to.
At this point, it doesn’t matter if the game counts or not.
Baseball is baseball, and we’ll take it.
No, it won’t be like anything we’ve ever seen before.
There won’t be fans in the stands. The season will be 60 games, barely more than a third of a normal 162-game season.
No minor leagues.
Some of the top guys are taking sabbaticals.
Whatever. Beggars can’t be choosy.
This is something that we’ve needed, desperately.
You can only look at Google News and Twitter on your phone for the latest on COVID-19 so much for four freakin’ months before you go absolutely bonkers bats–t crazy.
FDR got this back during World War II when he convinced MLB to keep up appearances with makeshift rosters as a way to provide a welcome distraction to a war-weary nation.
MLB also played its way through the 1918 and 1919 seasons at the height of the Spanish flu.
There wasn’t TV back then, and the economics of the business made it so that owners had to let fans in to be able to make money off the games.
Sports in the modern day can work around a shortened season without fans having to leave their homes with TV revenues as a foundation.
This could be the welcome distraction that we need to get us through a crazy time, which is only going to get crazier as summer turns to fall, and we have to add a contentious presidential election to the list of things that will drag down our collective psyches.
Story by Chris Graham
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