Major league sports have been suspended all over America due to the onset of COVID-19, which leaves sports fans with a number of pipe dreams regarding how to solve this problem to finally be able to watch sports again.
Ideas like playing the entire NBA season in Japan or Arizona have been passed around, but it seems in at least this one case that the MLB has a real shot at resuming play ahead of most other major league sports.
The proposed Arizona/Florida plan, which appeared to be just as unlikely as all the other plans, has become a real possibility with the recent reopening of Florida for all major league sports with a national audience.
This reopening came with an executive order from Florida governor Ron DeSantis who added “professional sports and media production with a national audience” to a list of essential services Florida.
This exciting news has brought hope to baseball fans, giving them a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. With the still open baseball stadiums of Arizona and the recent opening of stadiums in Florida, the MLB can shift itself into two new leagues at least for the 2020 season.
In the place of the American and National league, there would instead be the Cactus and Grapefruit league—which are used by teams during spring training.
This would not only limit teams to playing against opponents in the Cactus league in Arizona and in the Grapefruit league for Florida, it would mean that the 2020 season would have to be much shorter to be feasible in the long run.
Instead of digging into the logistics of this plan, it would instead be better to talk about the ridiculous nature of it and every other plan like it.
Yes, it would be great to watch sports or have something to talk about for change, but it would take a massive effort to coordinate this league. With this effort would come a large sum of money diverted from potential relief efforts for COVID-19 and the potential to infect each and every one of the players and employees of the MLB in the process.
Sports are a great diversion and honestly, there are few things in life more consistently entertaining than watching someone hit a home run or watching someone drain a crazy buzzer-beater in a basketball game. However, there must be a grain of salt to everything today with COVID-19’s effects looming large.
People are sick all over America and families are being forced to let their loved ones fight the disease all on their own. The economy is predicted to see its biggest downturn since the Great Depression. COVID-19 has turned the world on its head and has made something like leaving the house for a coffee a distant possibility.
This isn’t to say that anybody should stop dreaming up ways of major league sports being televised again. This is to say that the focus should be elsewhere and that even with the massive boredom that many people feel, sports simply are not a priority.
The Arizona/Florida plan could work and there are likely many others plan that could also be feasible, but at least for today and the near future, the world can continue to live without sports even though they are missed dearly.