Is a Major League Baseball season going to happen? Should it at this point? We have reached the sixteenth of June, less than a month from what would be the halfway point of the season, and players and owners are at a standstill over compensation, writes the Associated Press.
Sound familiar? Then you lived through the summer of 1994 when the season abruptly ended without a World Series for roughly the same reasons. What I remember from the last time was how angry the fans had become over the spat between employer and employee. I’ve seen a lot of the same threats of walking away from the game should the Major League season not happen.
But you have to remember: these are different times. There was no major health crisis to deal with in 1994 (no, OJ Simpson’s high-speed chase across the freeways of Los Angeles was not a major health crisis). The AP report mentions that tests on several MLB players for coronavirus came back positive. With that in mind, do we want to put more players at risk for our enjoyment? And do we want a season that goes into December? The idea of playing baseball in the middle of the holidays just feels wrong.
I’m not in the position to make this sort of decision, but no matter what anyone else says, it doesn’t seem worth it to even have a 2020 MLB season. The league should cut its losses and work toward possibly coming back in 2021.