ESPN: How MLB is navigating the coronavirus pandemic to play ball
From Tonya Malinowski at ESPN.com on May 19, 2020, with mention of SABR member Jacob Pomrenke:
Major League Baseball’s plan to start the season by July 4 relies on a dizzying array of moving parts, including the cooperation of 27 U.S. cities and a foreign country, the availability of more than 200,000 reliable coronavirus tests and a promise not to interfere with the nationwide fight to contain the pandemic.
ESPN examined the challenges facing MLB as it struggles to get back on the field. What emerges is like nothing that has been attempted in the history of American sport, less a baseball season than a military-style operation in which any number of variables could derail the plan, or, worse, contribute to the spread of the deadly disease.
“What’s at stake here is a human life,” said Andy Dolich, a Bay Area consultant who has worked as a senior executive for teams in every major sport, including the Oakland A’s. “That might sound overdramatic, but it doesn’t sound overdramatic to me. All the people involved, that’s a person, with a name, who has a family.”
Read the full article here: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29175321/how-major-league-baseball-finding-narrow-way-back-field-coronavirus-pandemic
Originally published: May 19, 2020. Last Updated: May 19, 2020.