COVID-19 Archives - Page 4 of 8 - Marc Normandin is creating baseball coverage, featuring leftism

Considering the “success” of sports during a pandemic

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If you’re just talking about in terms of players falling ill with coronavirus, professional sports leagues in America have done a pretty decent job of having seasons despite the presence of an ongoing pandemic. Major League Baseball had some early scares when the Marlins and Cardinals both dealt with outbreaks, but then, until Justin Turner tested positive and then decided it was fine that he got out on the field to celebrate the Dodgers winning the World Series, things were mostly uneventful on the players testing positive front for the league.

The NBA did the best out there, which should not be a shock given their season took place in a bubble, but the WNBA also deserves a nod for their own success navigating the pandemic. The NFL is a mess, but of course they are: that’s what happens when you combine the hubris of MLB with even less care given to the actual health and safety of the players.

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The MLBPA can still file a season-length grievance against MLB

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Evan Drellich published a piece at The Athletic last Friday, the focus of which was on Major League Baseball’s desire to delay the end of the current collective bargaining agreement because of the coronavirus pandemic against the MLB Players Association’s desire to… not do that. You should read the whole thing, but within was a note about the potential grievance the PA can still leverage over MLB, for putting on a 2020 season of just 60 regular season games, and that’s what I want to focus on at this time.

Here’s what Drellich had to say about it:

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You can’t trust MLB’s crying poor

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Now that the pandemic-shortened 2020 season is over, Major League Baseball has gone right back to where they were when they were negotiating the playing of a season in the first place: complaining about how expensive baseball is. Commissioner Rob Manfred didn’t even wait for the World Series to conclude before granting an exclusive interview to Sportico where he could discuss how much debt the poor owners had taken on just to give you, the fans, something to watch during the coronavirus pandemic.

Manfred claimed that MLB would post up to $3 billion in debt for the 2020 season, raising MLB’s total debt to over $8 billion. That sounds bad, just in an inherent, Billion-with-a-B sort of way, but there are quite a few qualifiers you need to consider before you contribute to MLB’s GoFundMe for a 2021 season.

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The MLBPA is standing with hotel workers getting a raw deal

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Major League Baseball has once again seen teams select a hotel with an ongoing labor issue during the postseason. Over the weekend, UNITE HERE Local 11, whose members are located in southern California and Arizona, sent out a press release explaining what’s going on. The short of it is that the hotel MLB selected to host a number of MLB teams during the postseason has failed to rehire many of its most senior workers which they had let go during the earlier stages of the pandemic. Business is back, but the jobs aren’t, at least, not for those with seniority and experience.

It goes beyond just that basic framing, though. These employees weren’t furloughed, with their health insurance kept intact, until things got better. They were fully let go, their health insurance cut off during a pandemic, while neighboring hotels managed to avoid doing either of those things:

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MLB plans to experiment with fans’ safety during pandemic postseason

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Let’s travel back in time to June 8, 2020, for a moment, shall we?

According to Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News, MLB is considering allowing local governments to decide if there will be fans at their games. In Texas, this would mean 50 percent capacity attendance, as governor Greg Abbott announced that would be allowed as of last week. This opens up the opportunity for MLB or its teams to pressure other local governments into allowing fans to attend games, which would be unsafe, but even if MLB’s hands are clean in this regard, that doesn’t make the existence of fans in the stands any safer. There is a reason these two sides are negotiating for how safe they can make a 2020 season — one that was never truly expected to include fans.

…

So, if this report is true, and MLB really is considering letting fans into their games in the states that are going to allow such a thing — the ones opening up before they should, the ones purposely messing with data to make the pandemic seem like less of a risk than it is, meaning the ones that are also going to be high-risk for further transmission because of a lack of precaution — then it’s even more clear than usual that MLB just cares about what kind of money they can make from 2020, and not the safety of anyone making or giving the money to them.

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MLB’s season has restarted, but not for struggling stadium workers

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Major League Baseball began its season last month, which meant television revenues could start rolling in once more. Owners and investors will be paid, players will be paid, coaches and trainers and clubhouse attendants and grounds crew will all be paid, too. Stadium workers, though, aren’t working these games: without fans, there was no need to bring them back into the fold just yet. Unlike with the minor-league players MLB teams are paying during the pandemic, though — at least during the timeframe their regular season would have happened — not all of these stadium workers are being helped out by their clubs.

And now that the $600 per week the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act has run out, that lack of assistance is even more apparent and harmful. Throw in that the Senate just left session without a sequel stimulus plan in place, and won’t be back to ignore or vote down the next plan until after Labor Day despite a literal pandemic impacting people who don’t make all the money they’ll ever need from corporate bribes and lobbyists, and times are even worse for folks like those who work at Oracle Park in San Francisco.

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Category: COVID-19

Considering the “success” of sports during a pandemic

The MLBPA can still file a season-length grievance against MLB

You can’t trust MLB’s crying poor

The MLBPA is standing with hotel workers getting a raw deal

MLB plans to experiment with fans’ safety during pandemic postseason

MLB’s season has restarted, but not for struggling stadium workers

The sports world could use more Jaylen Browns

Some MLB teams still haven’t promised to pay minor leaguers in August

MLB failed its first real coronavirus test

Canada doesn’t want any part of MLB’s 2020 pandemic season